About Proposal 'IPv6 Initial Allocation Update (Draft 2)'

Summary of the problem being addressed by this proposal

The actual policy text was done before the IPv6 deployment was initiated, and now we have the experience of new cases of big IPv6 deployments, even government networks.

It is also necessary to align the text of the subsequent allocations, in order to be coherent and not discriminate LIRs with existing allocations.

Furthermore, historically, the process for requesting the default initial IPv6 assignment (/32 block) was very easy and, because many people were used thinking "the IPv4 way," they believed this would be large enough for their networks.

For this reason, many ISPs don't prepare a proper addressing plan before requesting the proper prefix for the long-term deployment of their IPv6 network.

As a result, there are many cases —and quite possibly the number of such cases will increase in the coming months— where, as a result of the actual policy, the ISP will be forced to return the prefix initially they originally received, submit a new initial request, and renumber their existing deployment.

This is typically the case in the early stages of IPv6 deployment, when a serious, long-term addressing plan is prepared, even though there might have been an initial deployment of IPv6 in part of the network, such as the core, pilot projects, initial testing, etc. However, this situation can also present itself in more advanced stages of deployment, where obviously the idea is to complete the deployment without restrictions, renumbering, or serious changes to the addressing plan.

This could also be the case where the initial allocation occurred many years ago, at the time when it was free and easy to simply "request" an IPv6 prefix, without any study of the deployment and addressing plan. Several years may have gone by and the size of the network may have changed substantially, technical knowledge on how to use IPv6 has evolved, there are new technologies based on IPv6 (IoT, Smart Cities, ...), etc.

Revision History

References

Similar text exists and/or has been proposed in related policy documents at other RIR communities.