I think this proposal is timely and support it.
Dear SIG members
The proposal "prop-101-v001: Removing multihoming requirement for
IPv6 portable assignments" has been sent to the Policy SIG for
review.
It will be presented at the Policy SIG at APNIC 33 in New Delhi,
India, Thursday, 1 March 2012.
The comment period on the mailing list is an important part of the
policy development process. We encourage you to express your views
on the proposal.
Does this proposal solve a problem you are experiencing? David
Woodgate is looking for a co-author to present this proposal to the
APNIIC 33 Policy SIG as he is unable to attend. If you are
interested please contact him directly.
Information about this and other policy proposals is available
from:
http://www.apnic.net/policy/proposals
Andy, Skeeve, Masato
prop-101-v001: Removing multihoming requirement for IPv6 portable
assignments
Author: David Woodgate dwoodgate5@gmail.com
- Introduction ----------------
This a proposal to change the "IPv6 address allocation and
assignment policy" to allow portable (that is, provider independent
or PI) assignments of IPv6 address blocks to be made by APNIC to
any organization with due justification and payment of standard
fees, removing the current requirement that the requestor is or
plans to be multihomed.
- Summary of the current problem
Current APNIC policy only permits portable assignments of IPv6
addresses to be made to an organization "if it is currently
multihomed or plans to be multihomed within three months." [1] This
requirement may unnecessarily complicate the implementation of IPv6
in some networks that are large or complex and use static
assignment of addresses. It is therefore proposed to remove this
requirement.
IPv6 models tend to assume widespread assignment of registered
IPv6 addresses to equipment throughout a network; so if provider
assigned IPv6 addresses have been used in an organization's
network, then any change of ISP would require a renumbering of the
entire network. Such renumbering may be feasible if the network is
small or dynamically assigned (for example, through use of
prefix-delegation), but renumbering a large, statically-assigned
network would be a significant operational challenge, and may not
be practically possible.
Although it is likely that many large networks would be
multihomed, there will be technical or commercial reasons why some
will not be; currently those networks cannot obtain portable IPv6
assignments from APNIC, and would need to use assignments from
their ISPs, and accept the associated difficulties of future
renumbering if they do so. This consideration and complexity could
significantly delay IPv6 use by the affected organisations, which
is not desirable.
There is a risk that removing the multihoming requirement could
cause a significant increase in demand for portable assignments,
which in turn could cause the Internet routing tables to grow
beyond manageable levels. It is not feasible to quickly generate
any realistic model of likely demand increase which would arise
from the proposed policy change, but it is argued that any such
increase would only be of a scale to produce a manageable impact on
global routing, for reasons including:
- Organizations would only be likely to seek portable addressing
if they believed it were essential for their operations, as
provider assigned IPv6 addressing would be likely to be offered
automatically and at no additional cost with their Internet
services from their ISP;
- APNIC membership fees would be expected to naturally discourage
unnecessary requests, as these would be a far greater cost than
that for provider assigned addressing;
- Many or most organizations that require portable addressing will
be multihomed, so the demand increase caused by removing the
multihomed requirement should be small;
- Only a limited set of an ISP's products is likely to allow
customers to use portable assignments if they are singly-homed.
- Situation in other RIRs ---------------------------
APNIC is now the only RIR remaining with an absolute requirement
for multihoming for portable address assignments.
AfriNIC: The "Policy for IPv6 ProviderIndependent (PI) Assignment
for End-Sites" [2] does not mention any requirement for
multihoming;
ARIN: Section 6.5.8 of the "ARIN Number Resource Policy Manual" [3]
only identifies multihoming as one of several alternative criteria
for direct IPv6 assignment to end-user organizations;
LACNIC: There is no mention of multihoming anywhere in the IPv6
section (Section 4) of the current LACNIC Policy Manual (v1.8 -
07/12/2011) [4].
RIPE: The latest version (RIPE-545 [5]) published in January 2012
of the "IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy" does not
mention multihoming, removing the requirement that existed in
previous versions of the document.
- Details -----------
It is proposed that section 5.9.1 of APNIC's "IPv6 address
allocation and assignment policy" (apnic-089-v010) is rewritten to
remove the absolute multihoming requirement for portable
assignments, and to incorporate the following conditions:
A. Portable IPv6 assignments are to be made only to organizations
that have either joined APNIC as members or have signed the
non-member agreement, under the standard terms & conditions and
paying the standard fees applicable for their respective category.
B. An organization will be eligible for a portable assignment if
they have previously justified an IPv4 portable assignment from
APNIC.
C. A request for an IPv6 portable assignment will need to be
accompanied by a reasonable technical justification indicating why
IPv6 addresses from an ISP or other LIR are unsuitable.
D. The minimum IPv6 portable assignment to any organization is to
be an address block of /48. A portable assignment of a block
larger than a /48 can be made if it can be demonstrated that more
than 32,768 /64 subnets (or equivalent) are required within its
network or if numbering is required for 2 or more of the
organization's sites operating distinct and unconnected networks.
E. In order to minimise routing table impacts:
(a) Only one IPv6 address block is to be given to an organization
upon an initial request for a portable assignment; subnets of this
block may be assigned by the organization to its different sites if
needed;
(b) It is recommended that the APNIC Secretariat applies sparse
allocation methodologies so that any subsequent requests from an
organization for additional portable addressing would be
accommodated where possible through a change of prefix mask of a
previous assignment (for example, 2001:db8:1000::/48 ->
2001:db8:1000::/44), rather than through allocation of a new
prefix. An additional prefix should only be allocated where it is
not possible to simply change the prefix mask.
(c) Any subsequent request for an additional portable assignment to
an organization must be accompanied by information demonstrating:
(i) Why an additional portable assignment is required, and why an
assignment from from an ISP or other LIR cannot be used for this
purpose instead;
(ii) That the use of previous portable IPv6 allocations generated
the minimum possible number of global routing announcements and the
maximum aggregation of that block;
(iii) How the additional assignment would be managed to minimise
the growth of the global IPv6 routing table.
F. An organization must only use portable assignments made under
this policy to address its own networks. An organization must not
use portable assignments to address the networks or sites of other
organizations.
- Pros/Cons -------------
Advantages:
- This proposal would provide access to portable IPv6 addresses
for all organizations with valid needs, removing a potential
impediment to industry standard IPv6 addressing for large
singly-homed networks
- This change would align APNIC with the policies of all other RIRs
on portable assignments
Disadvantages:
- There would be a risk of an unmanageably large increase in
global IPv6 routing table size and APNIC workload if there were to
be a substantial and widespread increase in demand for portable
assignments arising from the removal of the multihoming
requirement
- But demand is expected to be limited by the requirements
specified in section 4 for justifications and APNIC standard fees,
as well as other industry factors such as the capability of
Internet services to support portable addressing.
- Effect on APNIC -------------------
The impact of this proposal on the APNIC Secretariat would depend
on the increase of demand for portable assignments. Even if demand
is eventually large, it is unlikely that there will be an
significant change in hostmaster workloads for a long time because
of the slow rate of take up of IPv6, and so there should be
sufficient time to identify and take steps to modify policies and
processes if necessary to manage the increase.
- Effect on NIRs ------------------
This proposal specifically applies to portable assignments made by
APNIC. It would be the choice of each NIR as to whether they would
adopt a similar policy.
- References: ---------------
[1] Section 5.9.1, IPv6 address allocation and assignment policy,
http://www.apnic.net/policy/ipv6-address-policy#5.9
[2] http://www.afrinic.net/docs/policies/AFPUB-2007-v6-001.htm
[3] https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#six58
[4] http://www.lacnic.net/en/politicas/manual5.html
[5] http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-545
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