[address-policy-wg] RE: Private address space in IPv4 and IPv6 [was something irrelevantly titled]

Hi,

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:03:16AM +0100, michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
> A very large number of organizations depend on these
> internetworks, and they would not be terribly happy if
> ISPs would hijack the entire IP address space for their
> own profits. But I think that the RIR boards understand
> this and have no intention of changing the rules to
> reserve IP addresses only for the public Internet.

Let me second that.

This has always been my understanding on the principles that govern
the RIRs' operation - "provide unique numbers to the people that need
unique numbers".  Be it IPv4, IPv6 or ASes.

We have had customers in the past that needed unique IPv4 space, to
be able to run their internal VPN networks without address clashes - and
I think this is a very very reasonable reason to request globally unique
address space.  So did the RIPE NCC, and assigned IPv4 PI to them.


Since we have enough address space in IPv6, this whole discussion is a
bit moot - what would we gain if we change RIR operations to "only assign
space that is required to be publically routed"?  With the current rate
that IPv6 /32s and /48s are handed out, we'll need a few 100 years to
fill up the first 1/8 of the IPv6 address space (FP 001) - and if we
notice in 50 years that our model is indeed too wastive, we can try
again with FP 010 or one of the other 6/8 of the available IPv6 address 
space.


Prefixes that *are* routed on the public Internet are likely going to 
be a bigger issue (due to limited routing table slots) than prefixes
that are *not* routed.  There's 500 million /32s in FP001, and if 99.9% 
of those disappears into hiding, we still have 500.000 potential routing 
table entries to worry about...  (very rough math, neglecting more specifics 
and /48s, but those wouldn't change the point - non-routed space is not
our problem here).


So - can we please get back to somewhat more relevant topics?

Gert Doering
        -- APWG chair
-- 
Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations:  128645

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