[address-policy-wg] Re: [policy-announce] 2006-02 New Policy Proposal (IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy)

> This is the most weaselly-worded clause of any RIR policy I've read.

Let's examine what possibilities there are:

plan vs requirement:

     1. Specify that a plan should exist to deploy x number of v6 sites
        within y years: this is nonsense from the point of view that
        anyone can create a plan to deploy anything, regardless of
        whether this plan is in any grounded in reality.  This comes
        back to the "do we lie to the RIR" issue.
     2. Specify that an immediate requirement exist for x amount of v6
        sites right now:  this is probably worse in the sense that the
        RIR has no way to validate this type of claim and that it will
        end up with more porky pies being told to the RIR.
     3. Specify that all LIRs who request a first ipv6 allocation are
        given a /32.  No particular justification required, except that
        the space be used for routing ipv6 traffic on the internet.

"reasonable number" vs "at least x".

     1. "at least x" has been proved to be completely meaningless in
        practice.  In fact, it's become such an problem that not only do
        oranisations endemically lie about it, people openly admit to
        lying about it.  This is an extraordinary situation, to put it
        diplomatically.
     2. "reasonable number" is weasly, no doubt about it, but if a
        utilisation requirement be added, what's the option here?
        200x/48 is a very large amount of deployment space if you're a
        small LIR with only a couple of customer, but you multihome and
        have a valid business/technical reason for anb ipv6 allocation.
        But if you're a huge enterprise organisation or a tier-1 transit
        provider or something, 200 x /48 might be very small.
        "reasonable" is suitably meaningless to cover both situations.

I mean, what are we actually trying to do here?  Do we want LIRs to have
easy access to v6 space or not?  Why don't we just scrap this
requirement completely and say that all LIRs can apply for and receive
an ipv6 /32, so long as its primary purpose is for routing ipv6 packets
on their and their customers networks (simply to avoid ipv6 registry
space being used for other non-related purposes where global uniqueness
is a requirement).

Is this substantially different from the de-facto situation at the
moment?  It certainly involves fewer lies and much less pretence on the
part of the RIR (if the RIR can be reasonably blamed for its policies
and I'm not saying that it should be).

> Niall, who apologises for the excessive markup

For your excessive markup, you're buying coffee next time. :-)

Nick