Policy Proposal 2006-4: IPv6 Direct PI Assignments for End Sites [Archived]

Status: Abandoned

Tracking Information

Discussion Tracking

Mailing List:

Formal introduction on PPML on 17 February 2006

Revised - 3 April 2006
AC intent to abandon on 14 April 2006Public Policy Mailing List

ARIN Public Policy Meeting:

ARIN XVII

ARIN Advisory Council:

16 February 2006
11 April 2006

ARIN Board of Trustees:

Revisions:

Click here to view previous versions.

Implementation:

Author(s):

Andrew Dul

Policy Proposal 2006-4, version 2

Proposal type: new

Policy term: permanent

Policy statement:

Add new subsection to the NRPM:

6.5.8. Direct assignments to end sites

6.5.8.1. To qualify for a direct end site assignment, an organization must meet all of the following criteria:

1. not be an LIR;
2. be an end site;
3. be currently multihomed using IPv4;
4. have a direct assignment from ARIN of at least a IPv4 /19 and can show the current utilization of 80% of an IPv4 /19 equivalent.

6.5.8.2. Direct assignment size to end sites

Organizations that meet the direct end site assignment criteria are eligible to receive a direct assignment of /48 out of a reserved /44. Organizations with multiple ASNs may be assigned a prefix large enough to permit a /48 to be assigned to each ASN.

Direct Assignments shall be allocated from a separate super-block to allow for LIRs to filter.

6.5.8.3. Subsequent direct assignments to end sites

Organization’s assignment size may be increased to the next larger prefix (to a maximum of /44) when the organization demonstrates any of the following criteria:

1. 50% of the assigned /64 subnets are utilized
2. 50% of the /48 subnets are assigned and utilized to unique ASN assignments

Organizations which request and can justify assignments larger than /44 shall qualify as LIRs and must make application for an allocation under policies applicable to an LIR, except that they shall be exempted from the requirement to assign addresses to other organizations.

Only one direct assignment may be made to an end site organization under Section 6.5.8

This policy is proposed as an alternative to the existing 2005-1 policy proposal. This policy is intended to be more conservative that the existing proposed 2005-1 policy. While this policy does allow PI assignments to end-sites, it limits the scope to current IPv4 holders with direct assignments. A more conservative policy is desirable as the first IPv6 PI policy.

Current ARIN policy does not permit an end-site from obtaining a Provider Independent IPv6 address block directly from ARIN. There is currently no viable IPv6 multihoming method available for these end-sites. Shim6 & other methods have been proposed as a possible method to meet multihoming requirements. Today, no implementation or alternatives exist to “traditional” IPv4 multihoming which announces unique address space from an ASN.

The largest end-sites (corporations & content providers) have the greatest to gain and/or lose by not having an available method to multihome. While IPv6 provides for stateless auto configuration for end hosts, no new methods for renumbering the infrastructure are available. The cost and complexity of renumbering these large organizations makes it essential to provide stable address resources which are not assigned from a LIR.

The lack of an end-site assignment policy is currently preventing the real planning and deployment of IPv6 networks in these organizations.

Other policy proposals (2005-1) addressing this issue have been presented at the ARIN 15 & 16 meetings. This policy proposal attempts to address the issues that were raised on the ppml mailing list and at the public policy meetings for 2005-1.

Specifically, the main issue surrounding the creation of consensus on this policy appears to be the criteria for which end-sites should be able to obtain an endsite assignment. Concerns have been raised about the creation of a new IPv6 “swamp” by having a policy that is too lenient. This issue is addressed in the policy by limiting the endsite assignments to current organizations with a modest IPv4 assignment.

The assignment of IPv4 resources is orthogonal to the assignment of IPv6 addresses. However, the use of existing IPv4 assignments and ARIN membership are postulated as an appropriate regulator for the initial assignments under an IPv6 endsite policy. It is reasonable to consider changes to the membership and IPv4 assignment requirements in the future. This review should be conducted after the endsite assignment policy has been in place long enough to understand the demand for endsite IPv6 assignments and the development of IPv6 networks have matured.

This policy proposal does not attempt to address the assignment needs for endsites which currently do not have IPv4 assignments.

Timetable for implementation: within 90 days of approval by the BoT