[sig-ipv6] Re: (ngtrans) Fw: [apnic-announce] IPv6 Policy Document Revision

[Steve Deering <deering@cisco.com>]

At 1:57 PM +0100 7/7/00, Tim Chown wrote:
>In the case of a national educational network (my particular interest)
>we currently have just 13 bits of network space to allocate to
>institutions, if the institutions (Universities) get a /48 each.

Tim,

/48 was intended to be the *minimum* allocation to a subscriber's site, not
the *maximum*.  Those exceptional subscribers for whom a /48 is too small
are free to request larger blocks from their ISPs.

>At the same time it is bizarre that a University might get the same address 
>space as a small end customer.

It's only "bizarre" if address space is a scarce resource; the purpose and
design of IPv6 was to make it a non-scarce resource.

>The last thing we want is end users running IPv6 NAT.

I think (hope) we all agree on that, and that is one of the reasons to
oppose variable-length allocations to (all but the largest) subscribers.
IPv4 history indicates that ISPs would charge more money for shorter
prefixes, thus creating an economic incentive for many customers to buy
only the smallest amount of address space and use a NAT to expand it locally.

Steve

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