first, thank you for comments.
This effectively amounts to APNIC holding a /16.
Any unknown future technology better be using IPv6.
while this would be a happy event, it is unfortunately not a forgone
conclusion.
By holding something, we also effectively not weening off IPv4.
i am confused. in 1 the problem is that it being withheld from use. in
2 the problem is that its use prevents weaning. is the problem that it
used or not? if the problem is that it is used, then this argument
devolves to one where we should also not use the other 99.41% of the
last /8.
isn't this the "make things difficult so people will change" argument?
as an operator, i think my job is to make things easy, not hard. the
incentive to move to ipv6 is not changed by a trivial bit of insurance.
- Any new technology most likely would affect other RIR and Internet
community as a whole. So if we want to address that issue, we should
take it up with ICANN/IANA. Maybe someone should propose to reserve
another /8 for future unknown technology from the global table.
as we have seen with -055, we would first need the other rirs to agree
to similar policy. a number of them have asked if we will propose -062
in their policy groups. this would be the path to what you suggest. i
have been hesitant, but if you would care to join a group to propose the
equivalent of -062 in afnog, arin, lacnic, and ripe, i guess i would
help with it.
but your changing from a /16 to a /8 may be perceived as a bit hard to
defend. a /16 is small enough to not seem silly to hold. a /8 is large
enough to cause a *lot* of discussion in arin and ripe in particular.
this is sort of why we thought it easier to just save 0.39% of our last
/8 for the public good, negligible cost, no fuss, just insurance.
randy