nanog mailing list archives

Re: v6 subnet size for DSL & leased line customers


From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja () bogus com>
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:22:06 -0800


Randy Bush wrote:
vendors, like everyone else, will do what is in their best interests.
as i am an operator, not a vendor, that is often not what is in my best
interest, marketing literature aside.  i believe it benefits the ops
community to be honest when the two do not seem to coincide.
If the ops community doesn't provide enough addresses and a way to use
them then the vendors will do the same thing they did in v4.

i presume you mean nat v6/v6.  this would be a real mess and i don't
think anyone is contending it is desirable.  but this discussion is
ostensibly operators trying to understand what is actually appropriate
and useful for a class of customers, i believe those of the consumer,
soho, and similar scale.

to summarize the positions i think i have heard
  o one /64 subnet per device, but the proponent gave no estimate of the
    number of devices
  o /48
  o /56
  o /64

It plausible that if one were to assign a single /64 and reserve a 56 to
delegate per customer that you could number about 16 million customers
per /32 with a few hundred thousand /64s remaining for infrastrucuture.
size of an agregate for a pop might be /48 (~250 customers) to /40 (65k
customers) to /36 (1 million customers)

A large retail isp might under those circumstances be able to get away
with order of /28 to /30 in total.

the latter three all assuming that the allocation would be different if
the site had actual need and justification.

personally, i do not see an end site needing more than 256 subnets *by
default*, though i can certainly believe a small minority of them need
more and would use the escape clause.  so, if we, for the moment, stick
to the one /64 per subnet religion, than a /56 seems sufficient for the
default allocation.

personally, i have a hard time thinking that any but a teensie minority,
who can use the escape clause, need more than 256.  hence, i just don't
buy the /48 position.


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