Dear Colleagues, This is an informal submission of the proposal that was presented at RIPE 57 in Dubai (http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-57/presentations/Robachevsky-IPv6_ass...), as was suggested by the community. Your feedback is appreciated as well as your opinion whether a formal submission should follow. Regards, Andrei Robachevsky RIPE NCC IPv6 address space assignment for RIPE Meetings --------------------------------------- A dedicated IPv6 prefix is assigned to the organisation that organises the RIPE Meetings. The size of this prefix is a /48 and the assignment will be valid as long as the organisation is responsible for organising the RIPE Meetings and the usage of the prefix is limited to RIPE Meeting networks. The status of this assignment will be 'ASSIGNED MEETING’ in the RIPE Database and must be returned to the RIPE NCC if not in use for RIPE Meeting networks. Rationale: -------- a. Arguments supporting the proposal RIPE NCC has been organising RIPE Meetings for over a decade now and it is still responsible for the setup of the meeting network. As IPv6 deployment has became more of a necessity, the RIPE NCC has been providing IPv6 network during RIPE Meetings too. Although first couple of setups were more at an experimental level, currently we offer this as a production-grade service to the attendees. The IPv6 space for these networks so far has been provided by some other organisations and so the assignments were in temporary nature. We appreciate the support these organisations have provided so far. Today a permanent IPv6 prefix is a necessity to be able to provide a stable and high quality service during RIPE Meetings. Having such a permanent and dedicated prefix, the RIPE Meeting Team of the RIPE NCC will be able to design and test the RIPE meeting network beforehand, which will ensure stable operation of the IPv6 network during the RIPE Meetings. This will also allow the team to have complete control over the network to effectively address issues related to security, redundancy and setting efficient routing policies with third parties. The proposal is worded in a way that the IPv6 prefix will be provided to the RIPE Meeting organiser. This is to ensure that the prefix will stay with the meeting organiser for the sole usage in RIPE meetings. This means if the RIPE NCC ceases being the RIPE Meeting organiser in the future, the prefix will be returned to the free pool. The reason for the size being set to a /48 is about routing reasons. Because this is the minimum excepted routable assignment size that is common among all regions, we think a prefix in this size will guarantee connectivity during RIPE Meetings. b. Arguments opposing the proposal Some may argue that this will cause waste of address space because the prefix will be only in use effectively during RIPE meeting