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.

This proposal will result in all LIRs in the RIPE NCC service region holding an allocation of IPv6 address space. This will help to speed up the deployment process discussed at RIPE 55. LIRs will be encouraged to begin deployment of their IPv6 allocation as soon as possible.

This document is not intended to change the current Initial Allocation criteria in the IPv6 policy. It is only a one-time operation.

b. Arguments opposing the proposal

It might be argued that this activity will be a waste of address space.

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 about 4,715 RIPE NCC members that do not hold an IPv6 allocation. Allocating a /32 to each of these members would result in approximately a /20 of IPv6 address space allocated to these 4,715 members in total.

Fragmentation/Aggregation:

One can expect to see 4,715 new more entries on the routing system. However, all these entries would be on the minimum allocation size, so significant fragmentation/aggregation impact can be expected.

B. Impact of Policy on RIPE NCC Operations/Services

After analysing the data that is currently available, the RIPE NCC does not anticipate any significant impact on RIPE NCC operations/services if this proposal is implemented, other than some minor billing impact.

Allocating a /32 to all members that do not have an IPv6 allocation would increase the billing score of these members. Under the current RIPE NCC Charging Scheme, this would benefit the existing IPv6 allocation holders, whose score would decrease in comparison to the current non-IPv6 allocation holders. In view of the low number of existing IPv6 allocation holders, the billing impact is expected to be minimal for the members that are affected by this proposal.