For whom is IPv6? [was: Happy St Nicholas Day: Re-Launching the IPv6 ULA registry]

[Nico Schottelius <[e-mail]>]

Good morning,

thanks a lot for the various comments and feedback. I might need to
take step a back and explain a bit more about the motivation to spin up
a "for free ULA registry" (actually rhymes, doesn't it?).

I am rather young compared to some people here on the list. But what I
learned when I was young is "you cannot buy an IP address" with the
notion of "addresses are always free, you might pay for the service to
give it to you, though".

So my understanding is that basic thought beyond building the Internet
is to enable communication between different parties. I do not claim
that there is no cost involved in this, as building (physical)
connections does cost actual money.

Being active in the IPv6 community I see on a daily basis how users or
potential users are struggling with a very basic need: the question of

          Which IPv6 addresses can I use?

For many personal and non-profit organisations the answer at the moment
is ULA. Why? Because there is no cost involved. No cost directly means
that communities can act and innovations on their own. And as a long
time Open Source hacker I can only say that the less hurdles you have to
take, the more likely you can actually solve the original problems that
you were tackling.

That said, users like community networks, do need some guarantee on
non-collision of their networks. If Berlin uses 2001:db8:aa::/48, it
would be good if Hamburg used something else. You can argue that within
one community there is likely going to be a "local" database (i.e. a
wiki or similar) of assigned networks.

But what if they merge with a different community? A lot of work needs
to be done for something that is already been done on volunteer basis,
this is not an easy task to do.

This can be solved by a ULA registry such as the one we
provide. However, you might argue that these organisations should
instead use GUA. I would personally even open to use an assigned block
from ungleich to give it to the community. However, this will bind users
to ungleich without an explicit need. And how is the space handled in
case we are out of business? It's not the most secure option.

Then you could argue people should get PI space. That is a great idea,
until you actually try to get PI space. The conditions set for the LIR
to keep track of their sponsored parties and the formal requirements are
neither easy for the user nor for the LIR. It is understandable from an
RIR perspective that you do not want to have zombie address space, like
we had in the IPv4 world, but where does it leave the users?

And this brings me to the topic of this email:

    For whom is IPv6?

If global space is too cumbersome and/or expensive for non-profit
organisations and if ULA space is fully random without a registry, what
are users supposed to do?

>From my point of view I see a big shift towards IPv6 in the communities
(open source, networking, even developers) at the moment. And I think it
is crucial in this moment to give people who are interested in IPv6 the
right tools. Today and not in a year or two.

I am by far not insisting on running a ULA registry. As a matter of
fact, there are very, very rare cases I ever use ULA
myself. However I do insist that we need to have a very easy entrypoint
when it comes to the question of

     Which IPv6 address space can I use (without colliding in the future)?

There are many answers to this question, some sketches from my side:

      - Using the proposed ULA registry (fd00::/8)
      - Defining fc00::/8 as "officiall registered, unroutable networks"
      - Defining a totally different [GUA?] space for free usage, but
        with automated alive checks

The first two options have been discussed to some extent, let me
ellaborate a bit on the third option: As mentioned above, I am not
deploying ULA much. With the main reason being that it prevents me in
practice to use the space on the Internet.

What if we had a space that users can acquire directly ("register") and
that requires (automated) alive checks from the user ("I am still using
this network"). It could also require users to setup appropriate
security measures, like RPKI, MANRS, etc. if they wanted to connect to
the Internet at some point in the future.

While slightly diverging from the original topic, the IPv6 ULA registry,
I hope this email illustrates a bit more the motivation of why we do
what we do and also that there is a need for a low barrier access to
unique, assigned IPv6 address space. Because if access to IPv6
addresses is expensive, I have nothing but to ask:

    For whom is IPv6?

Best regards,

Nico

Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> writes:

> On 09-Dec-20 23:42, Nico Schottelius wrote:
>>
>> Hey Ted,
>>
>> Ted Hardie <[e-mail]> writes:
>>> [...]
>>> Because of how they [ULAs] are created, ULAs do not admit of such an
>>> authoritative list.
>>> [...]
>>
>> I understand your point and I think the whole ULA discussion could
>> instantly be stopped, iif everyone had easy access to free IPv6 address
>> space. As far as I can see PI space is not an option because of the
>> current high administrative challenges (both as LIR and as a requestor).
>>
>> On the danger of going down the rabbit hole, I propose that ungleich
>> provides an open source, open data, for-free ULA registry (*) using the
>> fc00::/8 prefix that has been discussed before as centrally managed.
>
> That would trample on space that both the IETF and IANA have marked
> as Reserved, so no, that would be a Bad Idea, IMHO. Who knows what
> structure the IETF might decide for that space 10, 20 or 30 years
> from now?
>
> fd00::/8 is a space full of pseudo-random numbers, so a registry
> is certainly harmless.
>
>     Brian
>
>>
>> This way there is no conflict with self assignment / self managed
>> fd00::/8 range and neither the data nor the implementation is locked to
>> stay with ungleich in the future in case
>> IETF/IANA/any-of-the-five-RIRs/$other_org wants to take over.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Nico
>>
>> (*) The source code is already open source, usage is for free already,
>> however so far there is no automated data export, which we could
>> implement on a CSV basis and automatically update once per day.
>>
>> --
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