[156389] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPv6 Ignorance
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adrian Bool)
Mon Sep 17 10:57:36 2012
From: Adrian Bool <aid@logic.org.uk>
In-Reply-To: <50572D77.9090207@foobar.org>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:55:15 +0100
To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Hi,
On 17 Sep 2012, at 15:02, Nick Hilliard <nick@foobar.org> wrote:
> On 17/09/2012 14:37, Adrian Bool wrote:
>> It seems a tad unfair that the bottom 80 bits are squandered away =
with a
>> utilisation rate of something closely approximating zero
>=20
> You are thinking in ipv4 mode. In ipv6 mode, the consideration is not =
how
> many hosts you have, but how many subnets you are dealing with. =
Instead of
> thinking of 128 bits of addressing space, we talk about 64 bits of =
subnet
> space. So your statement comes down to: "it seems a tad unfair that =
the
> bottom 16 bits are squandered away". This is a more difficult =
argument to
> make.
I don't really agree with the "IPv6 think" concept - but let's put that =
aside for now...
The default allocation size from an RIR* to an LIR is a /32. For an LIR =
providing /48 site allocations to their customers, they therefore have =
16-bits of address space available to them to address their customers.
So, even in "IPv6 think", homes that typically have one subnet have an =
equal number of bits to address their single subnet as an LIR has to =
address all of their customers.
It seems illogical to me that we've got an 128-bit address space, =
featuring numbers far larger than any human can comprehend, yet the =
default allocation to an LIR allows them to address such a feeble number =
as 65,536 customers - a number far smaller than the number of customers =
for medium to large ISPs.
The default LIR allocation should be a several orders of magnitude =
greater than the typical customer base - not a smaller default =
allocation.
Regards,
Adrian
* At least for RIPE.=
