On Mon, 7 May 2012, Nick Hilliard wrote:
Now, we have a number of new realities:
- final /8 applies to all v4 address space when it kicks in, including space that gets returned later; - It also applies to v4 address space that has not been allocated or assigned by RIPE NCC at that date; - An additional 'special case' block was set aside for IXPs.
The special case IXP block is neither here nor there. A /16 makes no difference in the grand scheme of things.
What's relevant here is that as a result of 2011-03, the "last /8" policy would be more appropriately called "the dregs" policy - the ipv4 policies which apply to the last /8 will become permanent fixtures applying to all future address space after depletion. Perhaps they won't apply to a huge amount of address space, but there will be a constant and small turnover of address blocks reclaimed by the RIPE NCC for the foreseeable future.
Turns out, this is a pretty fundamental change. We had, as a community, created a last /8 policy because we believed that there was something special about the addresses in the bottom of the barrel. Then we realised that there would be a permanent small trickle of addresses into this barrel and that there was really no such thing as the "last /8".
I totally agree. It is one thing to reserve a certain pool to be handled in a special way (like the /16 for IXPs) but to have a policy claiming new rules on all IPv4 space no matter what, does not make sense to me.
In a roundabout sort of way, this policy floats the idea that the entire concept of the last /8 being special is slightly artificial, and that really they're not "special" addresses, they're just "addresses". Same as all the other addresses we've assigned, allocated and used all along.
The only difference we've really made is that we've narrowed the mouth of the toothpaste tube so that more people might be able to get a taste.
Taking a slightly different viewpoint, 2012-04 makes the last /8 policy more similar to the "run out fairly" model, except that instead of limiting on the basis of expected use within X months, we're putting some hard limits in.
Yes. Best Regards, Daniel Stolpe _________________________________________________________________________________ Daniel Stolpe Tel: 08 - 688 11 81 stolpe@resilans.se Resilans AB Fax: 08 - 55 00 21 63 http://www.resilans.se/ Box 13 054 556741-1193 103 02 Stockholm