[ipv6-wg] Why /48? (was IPv6 residential service: What prefix, static, dynamic, extra cost ?)

Jen and all,

Gather 'round kids, Grandpa has a story!

At 2016-05-18 20:56:13 +0200
Jen Linkova <furry13 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 8:45 PM, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ
> <jordi.palet at consulintel.es> wrote:
> > PD: In my opinion it should be /48 by default, static and opt-in to
> > dynamic, no extra charge on top of the Internet service price, but
> > I know many ISPs will not agree :-( Here just trying to collect the
> > info in a single place.  
> 
> [Disclaimer] I've not been involved in ISP business for a while]
> but... why /48? /56 would give 256 subnets. ought to be enough for
> anybody IMHO (unless your definition of 'residential customer' is
> quite different from mine...)

I was at a meeting way back in the 20th century - either my first or
second time at an IETF, IIRC. There was a discussion amongst RIR-types
about the default prefix size. Someone proposed the /48 and said that
we need to have the same size for every assignment, so that it is easy
for customers to move between providers, and to avoid establishing the
difference between 'residential customer' and other customers that you
are describing. Even at the time I thought it was a bit cheeky to be
establishing policy like this, but the idea was not criticized at the
meeting. (I also suggested that we don't really need to use 8-bit
boundaries even, but was told via some hand-waving arguments about
ASICs that this was absolutely necessary.)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cheers,

--
Shane
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