a. Arguments supporting the proposal
The community has recognised the importance of IPv6 deployment.
During the RIPE 55 meeting in Amsterdam, the RIPE community
also agreed to issue a statement on IPv4 depletion and the deployment
of IPv6 (http://www.ripe.net/news/community-statement.html).
Under this proposal all End Users in the RIPE NCC service region
will receive an IPv6 PI assignment. All holders of IPv4 address
space in the RIPE region will also be proactively informed that
they have been assigned a block of IPv6 address space and that
it is ready for deployment.
An assignment size of /56 is specified in the proposal in an
effort to keep the routing table free from /64 address blocks.
The /56 assignment is seen as a balance between individual routing
requirements and routing aggregation needs.
b. Arguments opposing the proposal
It might be argued that this activity will be a waste of address
space.
This policy also has the potential to cause routing table growth.
Additional Information:
Note: In order to provide additional information related
to the proposal, details of an impact analysis carried out
by the RIPE NCC are documented below. The projections presented
in this analysis are based on existing data and should be
viewed only as an indication of the possible impact that
the policy may have if the proposal is accepted and implemented.
A. Impact of Policy on Registry and Addressing
System
Address/Internet Number Resource Consumption:
There are 2.25 million inetnum objects
in the RIPE Database representing IPv4 assignments. We considered
an extreme case where these objects are all held by 2.25
million unique organisations, which would then all receive
an IPv6 /56 separately. The address space consumption for
these 2.25 million extra assignments would then be a total
of a /35 and a /37.
There were suggestions during the initial Discussion Phase
of the proposal that the prefix size should be at least a
/48. If this were the case, the address space consumption
for these 2.25 million extra assignments would be a total
of a /27 and a /29.
Fragmentation/Aggregation:
In the extreme case of 2.25 million new IPv6 Provider Independent
assignments, there would be 2.25 million more entries in
the routing system. It would not be possible to aggregate
these entries.
B. Impact of Policy on RIPE NCC Operations/Services
Registration Services: It is unclear to which individual
organisations Registration Services would need to make IPv6
assignments. This is because not all of the 2.25 million inetnum objects
contain the necessary contact information for the organisation
holding the address space. This is anticipated as a major
problem in the implementation of this proposal.
RIPE Database: To support 2.25 million extra objects, the
RIPE Database would need to be re-arranged significantly.
General: The RIPE NCC understands that the Address Policy WG
Chairs would require the full implementation of this proposal
only after the outcome of Policy Proposal 2007-01, which generally
discusses direct End User assignments. This would be the case
even if Policy Proposal 2008-01 concludes first.
you are here: RIPE > Policy Development > Policy Proposals
