It concerns me that none of the people supporting this proposal have directly answered any of the points Matthew has brought up below.

In case it's not obvious, I do not support this proposal at all.  On the face of it I don't see how it can actually achieve any of intended goals with any degree of assurance - there's too many other factors not able to be influenced by RIR Policy.

Mark.

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 6:05 PM, Matthew Moyle-Croft <mmc@internode.com.au> wrote:
Hi,

The proposal and the clarification appear to assume that an NIR or country (under prop-100) can allocate differently to the APNIC policy for IPv6 allocation which, to me, appears to be incorrect according to http://www.apnic.net/policy/operational-policies-nirs/text .  My understanding is that an NIR has to conform to the APNIC allocation policies.   An NIR as per the URL doesn't allocate from a block allocated to it, it does so out of the same space as everyone else.    The aggregation goal, whilst a noble one, is not a practical one that will be achieved and so I don't think is worth pursuing as, already, I can see for almost every economy in the APNIC region both deaggregation of IPv6 space as well as a diversity of BGP announcements.

It's also not clear to me what allocating a country out of a single block would do.   Would an ISP from one country then need to get allocations from each country it has a network element in?  My network would go from a single /32 to having allocations in four additional countries in the APNIC region alone.  How this would improve aggregation and route table growth I'm not sure at all - it would also increase the cost and complexity as I would have to interact with multiple .   If this is not the intent of the proposal then it also means that you would be unable to tell which country an IPv6 address was used in anyway.   

MMC




On 18/08/2011, at 12:46 PM, Kusumba S wrote:

Honestly, NONE of the issues raised by various members on this list have been addressed by this “additional clarification”.

Greetings,
Kusumba S

 

From: sig-policy-bounces@lists.apnic.net [mailto:sig-policy-bounces@lists.apnic.net] On Behalf Of RAKESH MOHAN AGARWAL
Sent: 17 August 2011 19:31
To: sig-policy@lists.apnic.net
Subject: Re: [sig-policy] FW: prop-100 National IP Address Plan - Allocation of country-wide IP address blocks

 

 

 

Clarifications in response to comments received from various members on proposal Prop-100 submitted to APNIC

 

1.       Brief of proposal PROP-100

A proposal was submitted to APNIC community from India on 29th July 2011 for allocation of contiguous IPv6 address block allocation country wise. In the proposal I have tried to put forward some issues regarding the current practice of APNIC in allocation of IPv6 addresses, which results in fragmentation of the address space and lack of long term planning in contiguous IPv6 address block allocation to organizations within a country. In this proposal I have also tried to bring out that till the NIR is created in India, to avoid random allocation of IPv6 addresses and fragmentation of the address space, APNIC should allocate IPv6 addresses from a large contiguous block only (for which I have proposed a /17 block, now revised to /16 block, if we consider nibble boundaries for allocation) from which all organizations from India are allocated the IPv6 addresses in future. Once the NIR becomes operational, this block may be allocated to the NIR for management of the address space for India.

2.       From the various comments received from APNIC community members, it appears that there is a need to provide further clarifications to proposal prop-100, which are summed up as below -

Everyone is aware of the fact that IPv6 is in the initial stages of deployment and therefore, this is the right time for taking steps which were missed in the IPv4 era. There are 2 very important aspects in the Internet address space, which are also some of the most important address management objectives in APNIC policy and  needs to be considered  –

 

a.       Conservation - The IPv4 address space was 32-bit only, but due to bulk allotments to the early users and insufficient planning for future allocations, the free addresses were exhausted fast.

 

India, which has a very fast growing ICT user base, mostly among the mobile users, did not get enough IPv4 addresses. We are having only 34 million IPv4 addresses for a telecom subscriber base of around 850 million in which there are about 360 million data users. India has recently rolled out 3G services and deployment of LTE services in future is already on the drawing boards of major operators. Every ICT user in INDIA, down the line in near future will be using IP technology in his day to day life.  Because of paucity of IPv4 addresses, India has decided to adopt IPv6 in a big way and so we have already released a National IPv6 Policy in July 2010.

Even though the IPv6 address space is 128 bits, which is considered almost infinite, the address space has to be conserved with proper and adequate planning for sufficient time period and considering the requirements of different economies in APNIC region. Therefore, the existing need based policy, putting emphasis on immediate needs only, required to be redefined in the IPv6 era and the policy should now address long term needs of the organizations and users of different economies. 

 

b.      Aggregation – It is agreed that the advantage of aggregation of the address space would largely depend on the organizations individual routing policy and hence not entirely eliminate the fragmentation issue but would definitely reduce the issue since larger aggregated address spaces could be announced .This objective in APNIC policy can be addressed by allocation of large contiguous blocks to organizations seeking IPv6 addresses for present and future needs. Since the current policy is a need-based policy, where IP addresses are allocated on the basis of immediate need, there are certain concerns  in this approach –

 

                                                               i.      Even though organizations can fairly predict their IP address need for the immediate future, they go back to APNIC only when they actually need it, because they don’t want to pay and block their money for a resource, which they will need a few years down the line. They go mostly by commercial considerations which is very natural for them. This may not have been considered in APNIC Policy . However, if a big block is allocated to a country on behalf of its different organizations, the country will take care of further allocations to the different organizations in a planned manner considering all facts for sufficient time period. This will not only meet the technical requirement of aggregation but also meet the needs of different stakeholders.

                                                             ii.      Additionally the aggregated country level address procurement would also have the cost benefit which can further be passed on to the organizations and help bring their Capex down.

 

3.       The larger internet population of the country like the Government, Service providers, Organizations based in India and the billion populations from India would use IP addresses from blocks given to Indian organizations. There will also be call centres, BPOs, multinational companies etc. having offices in India using the IP addresses allocated by other  RIRs who will also be benefitted because now they will also have an option to get contiguous address blocks for operations in India. Therefore, a large contiguous block will help to increase routing efficiency to some extent.

 

4.       APNIC has already approved the proposal of India for setting up a “National Internet Registry” within the country. This NIR will take some time to establish and operate.  Further, NIR will also receive large blocks of addresses from APNIC (maybe in one tranche or multiple tranches) for further distribution to different organizations in India.  Once the NIR is setup, the address planning and management can be done by the NIR. Since India is a large country of nearly  1.2 billion citizens, already having about 850 million telecom users with 360 million data users, and upcoming 3G and LTE networks.Additionally each of these users would require multiple IP addresses for the triple play services and applications. Hence at least a /16 address block will be required.

 

5.       Therefore, the proposal prop-100, which has been submitted to APNIC, on behalf of different organizations in our country, seeks to address these issues to ensure that whatever addresses are allocated by APNIC (and subsequently by the upcoming NIR) are from one single large block and not from different blocks. This will not only ensure network optimization but also adequate and contiguous address space availability for different organizations/stakeholders in a planned manner in future and with cost benefits to the end users. 

 

6.       With this, it is hoped that most of the general queries regarding the proposal are clarified.

 

Sd/-

R M AGARWAL
Deputy Director General (Networks & Technologies),
Department of Telecommunications, Government of India
Room no. 1104, Sanchar Bhawan
20, Ashoka Road, New Delhi – 110001
India

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
*              sig-policy:  APNIC SIG on resource management policy           *
_______________________________________________
sig-policy mailing list

-- 
Matthew Moyle-Croft
Peering Manager and Team Lead - Commercial and DSLAMs
Internode /Agile
Level 5, 150 Grenfell Street, Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: mmc@internode.com.au    Web: http://www.on.net
Direct: +61-8-8228-2909      Mobile: +61-419-900-366
Reception: +61-8-8228-2999        Fax: +61-8-8235-6909


*              sig-policy:  APNIC SIG on resource management policy           *
_______________________________________________
sig-policy mailing list
sig-policy@lists.apnic.net
http://mailman.apnic.net/mailman/listinfo/sig-policy