[apnic-announce] IPv6 Policy Document Revision
[Note "reply-to:" field]
Summary
Both ARIN and the RIPE NCC have had discussions with the Internet
communities in their region concerning the size of address prefixes
to be assigned to IPv6 end sites. APNIC is now seeking input from
the community in the Asia Pacific region on this issue. If you care
about this, please read on.
Some background
The existing IPv6 policy document 'Provisional IPv6 Assignment and
Allocation Policy Document' was published in May 1999. Formal revision
of the document commenced in October 1999. The existing document
is available at:
http://www.apnic.net/drafts/ipv6/ipv6-policy-280599.html
Feedback on the existing document was collected from the Internet community
at large facilitated through the regional processes of consultation by
the RIRs as well as input from the membership of the 6bone and the
IETF IPv6 working groups. The deadline for comments was 31st January 2000.
On 29th March, the RIRs, chairs of the IPv6 related IETF working
groups and 6bone particpants met in Adelaide. The purpose of the meeting
was to expand and elaborate in person on the comments made by the
IAB/IETF/6bone concerning the existing policy document.
One of the issues of concern that had been previously raised by
members is the size of the end-site prefix (the 'SLA ID', currently
defined in rfc2374 as 16 bits at a /48). This includes *all* types
of end-sites including a single device. A /48 is sufficient address
space to create 64K of subnets.
The technical motivation for the 16 bit SLA ID field and the
'one size fits all' principle was described in rfc2374 as:
"The size of the Site-Level Aggregation Identifier field is 16 bits.
This supports 65,535 individual subnets per site. The design goal
for the size of this field was to be sufficient for all but the
largest of organizations. Organizations which need additional
subnets can arrange with the organization they are obtaining Internet
service from to obtain additional site identifiers and use this to
create additional subnets.
The Site-Level Aggregation Identifier field was given a fixed size in
order to force the length of all prefixes identifying a particular
site to be the same length (i.e., 48 bits). This facilitates
movement of sites in the topology (e.g., changing service providers
and multi-homing to multiple service providers)."
It is possible to imagine in future a variety of types of end-sites
being connected to the Internet. Some of these devices will be part
of routed networks and others will not. The question proposed is whether
'one size fits all' (the /48) is appropriate for all end-sites?
Both the RIPE and ARIN communities have rejected this.
APNIC has been asked to consult with the Internet community in the
Asia Pacific on this issue.
To date, there has been no consensus on what alternatives should be
taken, but 3 different approaches have been identified in addition to
the 16 bit SLA ID field specified in rfc2374.
These are:
1) /64 for single devices (such as mobile phones), /48 for all other sites
2) /64 for single devices, /48 for large end sites which need more
than 256 subnets, and /56 for other sites (eg small, domestic/home sites)
3) Assign what is needed for the forseeable needs of the site, as a
variable-length prefix of between /48 and /64. (It is important to
remember that for any site that becomes multi-homed it is necessary to
use equal length prefixes from each provider even in the case where
one provider has allocated more prefix space than the other).
We are interested in your opinions, so that we may convey this to the
other RIRs and to the IETF community. Please direct all follow up
discussion and comments to <sig-ipv6 at apnic dot net>. For details of
how to subscribe to this mailing list, please visit our web site at:
http://www.apnic.net/general.html#mailing-lists .
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
APNIC Secretariat
<secretariat at apnic dot net>
Tel: +61-7-3367-0490
Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) Ltd Fax: +61-7-3367-0482
Level 1, 33 Park Road, PO Box 2131, Milton, QLD 4064, Australia
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
* APNIC-ANNOUNCE: Announcements concerning APNIC *
* To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe" to apnic-announce-request at apnic dot net *