RE: [lir-wg] Discussion about RIPE-261

["Michel Py" <]

Joao / Hans / Leo / Kurtis
[consolidated answers]

First, allow me to apologize for posting bogus numbers; I forgot to
change the base and the increment. Below at the end are pasted the right
numbers.


> Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote:
> using countries as the delimiter for any sort of network
> design seems a bit strange. Isn't the natural boundary
> closer to be an ISP, wherever its network is?

I am not using countries as a delimiter for network design. What we are
talking about here is allocation from the root to RIRs. Each RIR would
be delegated a set of countries like today, and RIRs would assign
prefixes to LIRs like today as well.

The changes this induces for LIRs are:
For small LIRs, this changes nothing. For medium LIRs, they might have a
few prefixes instead of a single one. For large LIRs, it does mean a
large number of prefixes to deal with in the short term, but not that
big of a deal in the long run as a large LIR present in dozen of
countries will need more than one /32 anyway.

> You talk about colonising planets. I would think that is
> much more probable you would have to worry about some
> European countries merging in a few decades.

I would say a few generations. And then what? We'll have a few more
prefixes than what would be really needed.

> The opposite can also happen, as it has in recent history.

There is ample room for new countries.

> Regional definitions also change. Form instance, would
> you care to explain the concept of Western Europe vs
> Eastern Europe, particularly beyond 2004?

It does not really matter, at least not for political reasons. The
reason there are zones is to provide a higher level of aggregation than
the country and also to provide some unused space. If you don't like the
cutout, feel free to propose one.

> Last time I checked, Hawaii was still part of the USA.

This was a voluntary decision given the unique geographical situation of
Hawaii. Most other islands that are thousand of miles away from the
mainland got promoted to the status of "country", look in the Central
America zone there is a country called Netherland Antilles for example.
This makes sense as obviously the fiber plant for these islands has
nothing to do with the mainland they depend on.

> Even if every user becomes multi-homed, as is a common
> scenario quoted by IPv6 visionaries, would the focus
> change from the ISP towards the user as the reference
> point for routing and network operations? I really don't
> think so.

Me neither. Remember that we are talking PA space here. This system is
compatible with multihoming systems that use PI identifiers _and_ PA
locators at the same time.

> Just like today you would get to talk to your cable TV company,
> the electricity company, the gas company, the water supply
> company, etc. Each of them, and a few new ones, would operate
> some sort of IP network to read your meters, provide "extra"
> service, etc and each is likely to have different policies
> because that would be the factor providing them with a way
> of differentiating their service.

Agree, what is your point here?

> Geography is not that important, network topology and
> autonomous policies are.

Agree too, what does my proposal change to these regards?


> Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> Can you explain "%G Pop."?

% of the global population. 


> How is it calculated?

These are year 2000 numbers and they should not be (they should be a
future projection some years down the road). I could not find a public
data set with a projection for free. If this was to go real, I would
need a better data set; however for the sake of the example these
numbers are good enough.

> I assume it has to do with GDP

Nope. These numbers are population only, so it considers that Ethiopia
is granted the same numbers of IPv6 addresses than silicon valley per
capita.

> as well as the source of the numbers.

There are census numbers adjusted by predicted short-term growth as
census are not taken in every country the same year. It means that for
some countries the number might be actual 2000 census data while for
other countries the numbers might be 1990 census data individually
extrapolated to 2000.

> (the exact UN stats page would help).

They took it away unfortunately and I can't find a cache.

> Needless to say, your numbers do not seem to take in any
> socio-economic factors. Assigning a /12 to North America
> as well as to Northern Africa and India might make
> socialistic sense as well as being "politically correct",
> but from a reality standpoint, it just don't fly.

It's politically impossible to assign socio-economic factors such as
wealth. Who am I to pick a number and decide that Ethiopia gets 16 times
less addresses that the US? If it is true that in the short term it
would work, this would generate endless debates, which is why I picked
that an Ethiopian gets the same number of IP addresses than an American.


> Leo Vegoda wrote:
> How would such a system cope with networks crossing
> international boundaries?

The general rule is that a multinational enterprise will obtain address
space from the LIR that provides services to it in each country.

Example: Enterprise Acme is present in 4 countries. In the Netherlands
it receives connectivity from LIR A and LIR B. In France it receives
connectivity from LIR C. In Japan it receives connectivity from LIR A
and LIR D. It gets 5 /48s:

Netherlands: - from LIR A's Netherland block
             - from LIR B's Netherland block
France:      - from LIC C's France block
Japan:       - from LIR A's Japan block
             - from LIR D's Japan block

Also, it is clear that LIR A is a large multinational LIR so it has a
/32 for the Netherlands and a /32 for Japan.
Hope this answers the question, if not please be more specific.

> Also, if an enterprise LIR moved from country A to country B,
> would they have to renumber?

I would say yes (doing otherwise would break the geographical
aggregation we are discussing). In reality, this never happens though. A
LIR does not pack their bags on a Friday evening, put the M160 in the
plane and deploy the next day in another country. What happens is that
the new network is deployed before the old one is taken down (in the
real world with in-house spares :-( and that the two address blocks
would be active at the same time, then if the LIR really completely
moves out of a country the old block should be given back to the RIR.


>> Michel Py wrote:
>> In other words, what we are looking at is one /32 prefix per
>> country per large LIR, opposed to as many /32s a large LIR
>> would need in the long run anyway.

> Kurt Erik Lindqvist wrote:
> Actually what you are looking at is one /32 per LIR + one /32
> per country per large LIR.

Of course, a small LIR still needs a /32.

> Without tweaking routing, a more efficient way would be to
> use the fact that IPv6 blocks are a lot larger than IPv4
> blocks and simply give one /32 to every LIR.

Then explain me how you achieve Gert's goal?

> I guess this would only work with RIPE who have the
> concepts of LIRs but anyway.

I don't know how to parse this? All RIRs have the concept of LIR?


Finally, here are the correct (I hope) numbers.

Zone              Population  %G Pop.  IANA
----------------  ----------  -------  ---------
China             1284971000   20.91%  3000::/11
Continental Asia   673454413   10.96%  3020::/11
India             1025096000   16.68%  3040::/12
Northern Africa    565854163    9.21%  3050::/12
Asian Islands      488468000    7.95%  3060::/12
Western Europe     423412058    6.89%  3070::/12
North America      318243350    5.18%  3080::/12
South America      350724557    5.71%  3090::/13
Eastern Europe     307858000    5.01%  3098::/13
Middle East        258577000    4.21%  30A0::/13
Southern Africa    242566332    3.95%  30A8::/13
Central America    175719760    2.86%  30B0::/14
Oceania             30568053    0.50%  30B4::/16
----------------  ----------  -------  ---------
World             6145512686  100.00%  3000::/8


Example of one zone:

Country              Population  %Z Pop.  %G Pop.  IANA
-------------------  ----------  -------  -------  --------------
United States         285926000   89.85%    4.65%  3080:0000::/13
Canada                  1015000    9.75%    0.50%  3088:0000::/17
Hawaii                  1224398    0.38%    0.02%  3088:8000::/21
Bermuda                   60000    0.02%    0.00%  3088:8800::/24
Greenland                 12483    0.00%    0.00%  3088:8900::/24
-------------------- ----------  -------  -------  --------------
Zone: North America   318243350  100.00%    5.18%  3080:0000::/12

Michel.