Fixed Boundary (/29) Assignments

Hi Leo,

I have a few problems with several of the issues you have raised here.

As regards assigning broadband customers a standard block, I think this is 
ignoring two very important features of everyone's favorite form, ripe-141, 
in particular the three year IP requirement and the potential to use NAT.

In my experience, most residential customers are quite happy to use private 
IP addresses, especially those unfamiliar with internet security.  As most 
home users only want something faster than their modem, there are few 
problems with this, other than Napster and netscape messenger not working.

For those customers requiring real IP addressing, I find that many of these 
are businesses. As such, it is very limiting to leave them with a /29 (only 
five IP addresses usable to the customer) Especially if this is to be their 
assignment for the next three years. While I can see the time that can be 
saved by offering a standard IP assignment, I do not feel this is in the 
spirit of the 141 in determining the exact IP requirements of the customer.

My main object is with assignment based on usage requirements . I know 
people who run offices with dozens of people of a dual channel ISDN line. 
Does this make them less worthy of IP addreses that a single home user with 
a 3Mb DSL line?  I know that IP conservation is now more important than 
ever, but surely this could be policed better by promoting the use of 
private IP addressing, rather than by restricting users who cannot afford 
to buy more bandwidth.



R


At 16:34 07/02/01 +0100, you wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>In my presentation to the Working Group at RIPE 38 [0] I brought up the
>issue of assignment policies for ISPs wanting to assign all customers a
>fixed size network (/29).
>
>The RIPE NCC is experiencing an increase of requests for this type of setup
>and would therefore like the community's input on this matter.
>
>There is no specific mention of broadband connections or fixed-boundary
>assignments in the current policy. However, we believe that the policy now
>requires LIRs to make assignments on the usage-based requirements of the
>subscriber. This is consistent with the RIRs' goal of conservation.
>
>The method of assigning a standard prefix size is certainly quite wasteful
>as one quarter of the space is lost on network and broadcast addresses.
>
>The requester justification for this assignment method is an estimation of
>the number of customers taking IP based services or having multiple
>Internet connected terminals at home.
>
>As a reference, it may be worth noting that in recent discussions on the
>IETF mailing list, Bernard Aboba estimates [1] that currently 27% of homes
>have multiple 'PCs'. It is difficult to predict the take-up of non-Internet
>IP-based services.
>
>Based on the above, we would like the Working Group to consider whether:
>
>  -  a standard, fixed-boundary assignment is acceptable for residential
>     broadband connections?
>
>Or
>
>  -  should the requester (the LIR) be required to ask the subscriber how
>     many IP devices will be connected and base the assignment upon this?
>
>Regards,
>
>leo vegoda
>RIPE NCC Hostmaster
>[0] http://www.ripe.int/ripe/wg/lir/present/
>[1] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/msg10586.html