INTERNET-DRAFT Thomas Narten IBM Geoff Huston APNIC Lea Roberts Stanford University November 19, 2007 IPv6 Address Assignment to End Sites Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress". The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html This Internet-Draft expires in six months. Abstract RFC 3177 argued that in IPv6, end sites should be assigned /48 blocks in most cases. The Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) adopted that recommendation in 2002, but began reconsidering the policy in 2005. This document revisits and updates the RFC 3177 recommendations on the assignment of IPv6 address space to end sites. The exact choice of how much address space to assign end sites is a policy issue under the purview of the RIRs, subject to IPv6 architectural and draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-03.txt [Page 1] INTERNET-DRAFT November 19, 2007 operational considerations. This document reviews the architectural and operational considerations of end site assignments as well as the motivations behind the original 3177 recommendations. The document clarifies that changing the /48 recommendation is one of policy, and has minimal impact on the IPv6 architecture and on IETF Standards. This document updates and replaces RFC 3177. Contents Status of this Memo.......................................... 1 1. Introduction............................................. 2 2. On /48 Assignments to End Sites.......................... 3 3. Other RFC 3177 considerations............................ 5 4. Impact on IPv6 Standards................................. 5 4.1. RFC3056: Connection of IPv6 Domains via IPv4 Clouds. 5 4.2. IPv6 Multicast Addressing........................... 5 5. Summary.................................................. 6 6. Security Considerations.................................. 6 7. IANA Considerations...................................... 7 8. Acknowledgments.......................................... 7 9. Normative References..................................... 7 10. Informative References.................................. 7 11. Author's Address........................................ 8 1. Introduction There are a number of considerations that factor into address assignment policies. For example, to provide for the long-term health and scalability of the public routing infrastructure, it is important that addresses aggregate well [ROUTE-SCALING]. Likewise, giving out an excessive amount of address space could result in premature depletion of the address space. This document focuses on the (more narrow) question of what is an appropriate IPv6 address assignment size for end sites. That is, when end sites request IPv6 address space from ISPs, what is an appropriate assignment size. draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-03.txt [Page 2] INTERNET-DRAFT November 19, 2007 RFC 3177 [RFC3177] called for a default end site IPv6 assignment size of /48. Subsequently, the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) developed and adopted IPv6 address assignment and allocation policies consistent with the RFC 3177 recommendations [RIR-IPV6]. In 2005, the RIRs began discussing IPv6 address assignment policy again. Since then, APNIC [APNIC-ENDSITE], ARIN [ARIN-ENDSITE] and RIPE [RIPE- ENDSITE] have revised the end site assignment policy to encourage the assignment of smaller (i.e., /56) blocks to end sites. Additional history and discussion of IPv6 address policy and its long-term implications can be found in [IPV6-HISTORY]. This document revisits and updates the RFC 3177 recommendations. This document does not make a formal recommendation on what the exact assignment size should be. The exact choice of how much address space to assign end sites is a policy issue under the purview of the RIRs, subject to IPv6 architectural and operational considerations. This document is input into those discussions. The focus of this document is to examine the architectural issues and some of the operational considerations relating to the size of the end site assignment. 2. On /48 Assignments to End Sites Looking back at some of the original motivations behind the /48 recommendation [RFC3177], there were three main concerns. The first motivation was to ensure that end sites could easily obtain sufficient address space without having to "jump through hoops" to do so. For example, if someone felt they needed more space, just the act of asking would at some level be sufficient justification. As a comparison point, in IPv4, typical home users are given a single public IP address (though even this is not always assured), but getting any more than one address is often difficult or even impossible -- unless one is willing to pay a (significantly) increased fee for what is often considered to be a "higher grade" of service. (It should be noted that increased ISP charges to obtain a small number of additional addresses cannot usually be justified by the real per-address cost levied by RIRs, but additional addresses are frequently only available to end users as part of a different type or "higher grade" of service, for which an additional charge is levied. The point here is that the additional cost is not due to the RIR fee structures, but to business choices ISPs make.) An important goal in IPv6 is to significantly change the default and minimal end site assignment, from "a single address" to "multiple networks" and to ensure that end sites can easily obtain address space. A second motivation behind the original /48 recommendation was to draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-03.txt [Page 3] INTERNET-DRAFT November 19, 2007 simplify the management of an end site's addressing plan in the presence of renumbering (e.g., when switching ISPs). In IPv6, a site may simultaneously use multiple prefixes, including one or more public prefixes from ISPs as well as Unique Local Addresses [ULA- ADDRESSES]. In the presence of multiple prefixes, it is significantly less complex to manage a numbering plan if the same subnet numbering plan can be used for all prefixes. That is, for a link that has (say) three different prefixes assigned to it, the subnet portion of those prefixes would be identical for all assigned addresses. In contrast, renumbering from a larger set of "subnet bits" into a smaller set is often painful, as it it can require making changes to the network itself (e.g., collapsing subnets). Hence renumbering a site into a prefix that has (at least) the same number of subnet bits is more straightforward, because only the top-level bits of the address need to change. A key goal of the RFC 3177 recommendations is to ensure that upon renumbering, one does not have to deal with renumbering into a smaller subnet size. It should be noted that similar arguments apply to the management of zone files in the DNS. In particular, managing the reverse (ip6.arpa) tree is simplified when all links are numbered using the same subnet ids. A third motivation behind the /48 recommendation was to better support network growth common at many sites. In IPv4, it is usually difficult (or impossible) to obtain public address space for more than a few months worth of projected growth. Thus, even slow growth over several years can lead to the need to renumber into a larger address blocks. With IPv6's vast address space, end sites can easily be given more address space (compared with IPv4) to support possible growth over multi-year time periods. While the /48 recommendation does simplify address space management for end sites, it has also been widely criticized as being wasteful. For example, a large business (which may have thousands of employees) would receive the same amount of address space as a home user, who today typically has a single LAN and (at most) a small number of machines. While it seems likely that the size of a typical home network will grow over the next few decades, it is hard to argue that home sites will make use of 65K subnets within the foreseeable future. At the same time, it might be tempting to give home sites a single /64, since that is already significantly more address space compared with today's IPv4 practice. However, this precludes the expectation that even home sites will grow to support multiple subnets going forward. Hence, it is strongly intended that even home sites be given multiple subnets worth of space by default. The above-mentioned RFC3177 goals can easily be met by giving home draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-03.txt [Page 4] INTERNET-DRAFT November 19, 2007 users a /56 assignment by default. 3. Other RFC 3177 considerations RFC3177 suggested that some multihoming approaches (e.g., GSE) might benefit from having a fixed /48 boundary. This no longer appears to be a consideration. RFC3177 argued that having a "one size fits all" default assignment size reduced the need for customers to continually or repeatedly justify usage of existing address space in order to get "a little more". Likewise, it also reduces the need for ISPs to evaluate such requests. Given the large amount of address space in IPv6, there is plenty of space to grant end sites enough space to consistent with reasonable growth projections over multi-year time frames. Thus, it remains highly desirable to provide end sites with enough space (on both initial and subsequent assignments) to last several years. Fortunately, this goal can be achieved in a number of ways and does not require that all end sites receive the same default size assignment. 4. Impact on IPv6 Standards 4.1. RFC3056: Connection of IPv6 Domains via IPv4 Clouds RFC3056 [RFC3056] describes a way of generating IPv6 addresses from an existing public IPv4 address. That document describes an address format in which the first 48 bits concatenate a well-known prefix with a globally unique public IPv4 address. The "SLA ID" field is assumed to be 16 bits, consistent with a 16-bit "subnet id" field. To facilitate transitioning from an RFC3056 address numbering scheme to one based on a prefix obtained from an ISP, an end site would be advised to number out of the right most bits first, using the left most bits only if the size of the site made that necessary. Similar considerations apply to other documents that allow for a subnet id of 16 bits, including [ULA-ADDRESSES]. 4.2. IPv6 Multicast Addressing Some IPv6 multicast address assignment schemes embed a unicast IPv6 prefix into the multicast address itself [RFC3306]. Such documents do not assume a particular size for the subnet id per se, but do assume draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-03.txt [Page 5] INTERNET-DRAFT November 19, 2007 that the IPv6 prefix is a /64. Thus, the relative size of the subnet id has no direct impact on multicast address schemes. 5. Summary The exact choice of how much address space to assign end sites is a policy issue under the purview of the RIRs, subject to IPv6 architectural and operational considerations. The RFC 3177 recommendation to assign /48s as a default is not a requirement of the IPv6 architecture; anything of length /64 or shorter works from a standards perspective. However, there are important operational considerations as well, some of which are important if users are to share in the key benefit of IPv6: expanding the usable address space of the Internet. The IETF recommends that any policy on IPv6 address assignment policy to end sites take into consideration: - it should be easy for an end site to obtain address space to number multiple subnets (i.e., a block larger than a single /64) and to support reasonable growth projections over long time periods (e.g., a decade or more). - the default assignment size should take into consideration the likelihood that an end site will have need for multiple subnets in the future and avoid the IPv4 practice of having frequent and continual justification for obtaining small amounts of additional space Although a /64 can (in theory) address an almost unlimited number of devices, sites should be given sufficient address space to be able to lay out subnets as appropriate, and not be forced to use address conservation techniques such as using bridging (if not desired). - it is generally unacceptable to have one ISP assign a longer prefix to an end site when compared with the existing prefixes the end site already has assigned to it - the operational considerations of managing and delegating the reverse DNS tree under ip6.arpa on nibble vs. non-nibble boundaries should be given adequate consideration 6. Security Considerations This document has no known security implications. draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-03.txt [Page 6] INTERNET-DRAFT November 19, 2007 7. IANA Considerations This document makes no requests to IANA. 8. Acknowledgments This document was motivated by and benefited from numerous conversations held during the ARIN XV and RIPE 50 meetings in April- May, 2005. 9. Normative References 10. Informative References [APNIC-ENDSITE] "prop-031: Proposal to amend APNIC IPv6 assignment and utilisation requirement policy," http://www.apnic.net/policy/proposals/prop-031-v002.html [ARIN-ENDSITE] "2005-8: Proposal to amend ARIN IPv6 assignment and utilisation requirement", http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2005_8.html [IPV6-HISTORY] Issues Related to the Management of IPv6 Address Space, draft-narten-iana-rir- ipv6-considerations-00.txt [RIR-IPV6] ARIN: http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#ipv6; RIPE Document ID: ripe-267, Date: 22 January 2003 http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ipv6policy.html; APNIC: http://www.apnic.net/docs/policy/ipv6-address- policy.html [RFC3056] "Connection of IPv6 Domains via IPv4 Clouds," B. Carpenter, K. Moore, RFC 3056, February 2001. [RFC3306] "Unicast-Prefix-based IPv6 Multicast Addresses," B. Haberman, D. Thaler, RFC 3306, August 2002. [RFC3177] IAB/IESG Recommendations on IPv6 Address Allocations to Sites. IAB, IESG. September 2001. [RIPE-ENDSITE] "Proposal to Amend the IPv6 Assignment and Utilisation Requirement Policy", 2005-8, draft-narten-ipv6-3177bis-48boundary-03.txt [Page 7] INTERNET-DRAFT November 19, 2007 http://ripe.net/ripe/policies/proposals/2005-08.html [ROUTE-SCALING] "Routing and Addressing Problem Statement", draft- narten-radir-problem-statement-01.txt [ULA-ADDRESSES] RFC 4193 "Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Addresses," R. Hinden, B. Haberman, RFC 4193, October 2005. 11. Author's Address Thomas Narten IBM Corporation 3039 Cornwallis Ave. PO Box 12195 - BRQA/502 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2195 Phone: 919-254-7798 EMail: narten@us.ibm.com Geoff Huston APNIC EMail: gih@apnic.net Rosalea G Roberts Stanford University, Networking Systems 241 Panama Street Pine Hall, room 175B Stanford, CA 94305-4102 Email: lea.roberts@stanford.edu Phone: +1-650-723-3352 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). 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