On 2/26/12 08:32 CST, David Woodgate wrote:
In contrast, the ARIN requirements - which seem to be the most stringent
of the other 4 RIRs - are (see
https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#six58 ):
1. Having a previously justified IPv4 end-user assignment from ARIN or
one of its predecessor registries, or;
2. Currently being IPv6 Multihomed or immediately becoming IPv6
Multihomed and using an assigned valid global AS number, or;
3. By having a network that makes active use of a minimum of 2000 IPv6
addresses within 12 months, or;
4. By having a network that makes active use of a minimum of 200 /64
subnets within 12 months, or;
5. By providing a reasonable technical justification indicating why
IPv6 addresses from an ISP or other LIR are unsuitable.
I did not read the discussions regarding the ARIN policy proposal
involved and therefore do not know the background to the "2000 addresses
or 200 /64s in 12 months", but I admit that for me personally they seem
to be somewhat arbitrary thresholds, especially when it seems they could
be overridden by the general "reasonable technical justification"
criterion anyway. (Would anyone from ARIN care to clarify the reasons
those thresholds were selected?)
The previous version of ARIN's IPv6 end-uesr assignment policy
allowed any network that had already or that would qualified for an
IPv4 assignment using current IPv4 policy, to receive an IPv6
assignment. This essentially created a dependency between our IPv6
policy and our IPv4 policy. One of the stated goals of ARIN-2010-8
was to remove such direct dependencies between the IPv6 policy on
the IPv4 policy.
https://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2010_8.html
Therefore criteria #3 above, is essentially a restatement of the
IPv4 end-user policy that requires demonstration of 50% utilization
of a /20 within 12 months for a single connected end-user, that
would be 2048 hosts, which was rounded down to 2000. By restating
the criteria, there is no longer a direct dependency of our IPv6
policy on our IPv4 policy. I believe eventually we will eliminate
this criteria, especially once the associated IPv4 policy becomes
irreverent, but we are not quite there yet.
Criteria #4 from above, came from the idea that the number of hosts
on a IPv6 network may not be all that reverent of a metric for IPv6,
and the number of subnets needed for an IPv6 network is possibly a
more relevant metric. The choice of 200 subnets as the threshold
was mostly arbitrary. As I would argue the choice of /20 for IPv4
is equally arbitrary.
The intent of including criteria #3 and #4 in addition to criteria
#5 above, is to establish thresholds below which you need to provide
"reasonable technical justification" in order to receive an
assignment. Since these thresholds exist, it is implied that a
"reasonable technical justification" will need to be more that just
"I don't want to renumber". Therefore, such a justification needs
an additional basis, as discuss in the examples in the policy;
infrastructure critical to the larger society, greater impact on
society beyond the simply number of hosts involved, guaranteed
address uniqueness for non-connected networks, authoritative DNS
delegation necessary for non-connected networks, etc...
While IPv6 Multihoming is not a requirement for an end-user
assignment in ARIN policy; By including criteria #2 above, it is
made clear that it is a sufficient justification in and of itself
for an end-user assignment, regardless of any other criteria.
I hope that helps clarify the intent behind ARIN's policy.
--
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David Farmer Email:farmer at umn dot edu
Networking & Telecommunication Services
Office of Information Technology
University of Minnesota
2218 University Ave SE Phone: 612-626-0815
Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029 Cell: 612-812-9952
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