[ipv6-wg at ripe.net] Re: What is a site?

[please don't post in HTML]

On Fri, 2005-05-06 at 09:44 +0100, @UUNET SE Ip wrote:
> Hi.
>  
> Following the discussion about /48 boundaries I'd like a better
> definition of what a site is.
>  
> My definition of an end-user site is the office where we (MCI/UUNET)
> install a circuit. This could be a large office or a small bransch
> office or anything in between.

This is the best way to target the 'what is a site'.

Another way to approach it is saying that a site is a different site
when it crosses an administrative border, aka the persons(s) operating
that network is not equal to the other persons.

> Each office is handled separately and they request IPv4 addresses per
> office. Adopting this to IPv6 it would mean that each office would get
> a /48. This is too much for many of them.

At the moment that would indeed be way too much, but maybe in the future
when every lightbulb gets an IP address and not forgetting that all the
coffee and beertaps get one too ("Dear <beerprovider>, I ran out of
beer, resupply me"), then it will become easier to fill it up.

Then again, a /48 is 65535 /64's. This thus means that a /48 has 65535
separate L2 networks in that site. Currently not thinkable indeed, but
it does also size a small site to a very large one and accomodates all.

> Approx. 80-90% of our sites request 32 IP-addresses or less and most
> likely only subnet it 2 or 4 times if they ever subnet it.

The question to ask here is, are they using those 32 IP's for servers
and NAT the rest or do they use a firewall and give every box a public
IP. If they are doing the latter it is not a hard guess how small these
sites are :)
 
> Furthermore we never get a complete network design for all branch
> offices if the customer is transnational  or even national so we can't
> really assign a /48 to the customer for him to subnet among his
> offices. We can of course change our procedures to accomomodate
> thisbut this will make things a lot more difficult for us as a LIR and
> also the customer.

They are an endsite, you can easily guess they have most likely more
than one network, thus you as a LIR give them a /48. No further thinking
about it.

Greets,
 Jeroen

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