Subject: Re: draft-ietf-ipngwg-ipaddressassign-02.txt

From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:30:38 +0300 (EEST)

Hello all,

I have an additional comment regarding flexible IP address assignments.
Whether or not it's worth considering for inclusion, and to what extent,
is up to you.

The method described in the I-D does not discuss the merits and downsides
of strictly bit-wise allocations; I'm of an opinion that if there are
strong grounds to do otherwise (e.g. want to assignly densely, or expect a
big number of assignments), it would make sense to do assignments on
nibble boundaries.

The reasons should be obvious.  The most important is that they're lot
easier for humans to understand, and make no mistakes about.  Consider:

2001:pTLA:ABCD:0::/64

When allocated a /32 (or /35) you would effectively have 3-4 different
"aggregation" levels if you did this at the nibble boundary, ie. want to
avoid "breaking characters (A-D) if it can be avoided.

Another plus is the ability of reverse delegations (now you must do up to
15 of them per zone depending on how you allocate).  This might change
though, and is not the prime motivator here.

So, this would make the addresses easier to understand by customers,
operators etc.  -- sure, you can use a nice script to compute the
bit-boundaries, but that doesn't make them much easier to
{understand,verify their correctness in your head, etc.} for us hunams.

With this scheme, depending on the pTLA size and growth views, possible
assignments could be (as we've done):

A = 0 (for now)
B = Big PoP's (max 16)
C = Organization within a PoP (max 16)
D = 0 (for now) -- room for expansion in the foreseeable future.

16 organizations/PoP (in our case, we're talking about _big_
organizations, ones currently with IPv4 /16's and the like) is a rather
small value and it is expected to have to expand this to D, but I doubt
that has to be decided until after a few years at least.

Note that this (or the original) I-D does not address the problems with
RIR policy vs. IESG "/48 for everybody" recommendation (nor they should),
as with current policies there is no way there would be enough /48's for
home users etc.  too.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "Tell me of difficulties surmounted,
Netcore Oy                   not those you stumble over and fall"
Systems. Networks. Security.  -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords

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