Subject: Re: [v6ops] How was a /16 of IPv6 asigned from ARIN to non large network?

From: Daryll Swer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2023 01:24:43 +0530

Owen

> Well, HE will, FWIW.

Ah, HE, yes, a good example regarding /16, even they managed with non-/16
(from what I can see in the public info), to give /48s for everybody
(globally too, not just USA). Anyhow, I suppose the single /16 is okay,
even if it was not, 50–100 years from now will probably have some other
protocol or addressing technology that would supersede IPv6 for various
possible reasons in the far future. Like Ed Horley, did suggest earlier,
hard to predict the far future.

> Mine wouldn’t either, so I went to ARIN instead.
Ah yes, I too opted for my own pool via APNIC. You can forget about /56,
ISPs here believe a single /64 works with SLAAC across multiple VLANs (yes,
they said that. No, I'm not exaggerating).

> Let’s assume an average residential customer is US$30/month or
equivalent.
I'll stop right here. This is clearly an American model and potentially
European as well (I'm not aware of the facts and figures for Europe, but
it's likely). These numbers make no sense for a lot of non-American
economies.

I quote myself again, below:
> Not all orgs have American-oriented financial power to justify paying for
larger RIR allocations.

Some sources for reference for ARPU in India (it'll probably blow your
mind!):

   -
   https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/jio-beats-q4-arpu-estimates-on-home-broadband-growth/99745267
   -
   https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/competition-hotting-up-as-jio-airtel-eye-high-arpu-home-segment/104342552

> APNIC’s fees are (IMHO) steep, but in APNIC, you’ve chosen a governance
model that allows the largest ISPs to dominate by having a huge voting
status where the large players (mostly government run NIRs) get 64 votes
vs. most smaller players only getting 1 vote. This antidemocratic system
creates many barriers to good customer practices.
> Unfortunately, those in power are loathe to change the system, because it
keeps them in power.

Unfortunately, in APAC, a lot of people, seemingly are happy, to just
accept the status quo. A good piece was written on this issue from an
Indian lens here
<https://anuragbhatia.com/2022/05/my-views/challenges-of-building-a-world-class-nog/>.
A lot of APAC related mailing list are more silent than outer space…
Including my own country's NOG, a waste of time and efforts to try to
change the status quo unless folks unite and work together, I was very
active in the Indian space, but gave up (the linked piece explains most of
the reasons) on wasting my time.

> Unfortunately, there’s little that can be done for unsustainable business
models where the ARPU is insufficient for the costs of providing the
service. Further, I think that the way APNIC has structured its cost model
is horrible. India does have an NIR, not sure if that can be helpful for
this or not.

Oh no, please don't get started on the NIR in India. They, in fact,
encourage outside nibble-bit boundary allocations (APNIC folks know this, I
know this, most Indian operators know this, but nobody does anything), all
the way from their top leadership/management.

*Side Note:Owen, if you're interested in further discussion. Perhaps we
both should take this conversation off the mailing list, since we're moving
more towards layer 8 specific issues and less to do with IPv6 ops. I do
have more inputs on the financial aspect, APAC specific issue aspect and
NIR aspect but probably best off-list.*

Thanks everyone for the inputs, good to see various perspective on the
topic of large IPv6 allocations. I'm hopping off this thread now.

*--*
Best Regards
Daryll Swer
Website: daryllswer.com
<https://mailtrack.io/link/c59e1ebc9d876516e3f1ed5c45d4e9d52ab80f9e?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.daryllswer.com&userId=2153471&signature=ecffe8191c1bd80b>

On Tue, 12 Dec 2023 at 00:41, [email-masked] <owen=
[email-masked]> wrote:

> > And again, back to IPv4 think. Why not /48 per customer site whether
> enterprise, residential, or mobile?
> > And that’s unfortunate for your customers and their customers.
>
> This isn't due to IPv4 thinking, yes a /48 per customer site for all
> customers is awesome, I fully endorse this idea, in theory only. I would
> love my residential ISP in my small home town to give me a /48 routed from
> their PA as well.
>
>
> Well, HE will, FWIW.
> Mine wouldn’t either, so I went to ARIN instead.
>
> But in reality, a /48 for everybody = massive RIR Fees for larger
> allocations that simply, financially, is not justifiable for a lot of
> network operators in a lot of economies, the financial numbers just don't
> make sense.
>
>
> It really doesn’t.
>
> A /48 standalone is $250/year from ARIN.
> You get 16x that for 2x the fees at every higher level, so a /44 is $500,
> a /40 is $1,000, 36 is $2,000, 32 is $4,000,
>
> Let’s assume an average residential customer is US$30/month or equivalent.
> That’s $360/year. Let’s assume that $359 of that goes to circuit
> maintenance, backbone, and other costs leaving just $1/year/customer to
> cover RIR fees.
>
> Further, let’s assume that your network structure doesn’t allow you to do
> any better than 50%  density in your /48 assignments overall. That gives
> you 32,768 customers per /32.
>
> At that rate, you only need $0.125/customer/year to cover that /32. If you
> have 16 times that many customers and need a /28, then you’ll be paying
> $8,000/year to cover 524,288 customers = $0.016/customer/year (rounded up
> from 0.0152587890625).
>
> APNIC’s fees are (IMHO) steep, but in APNIC, you’ve chosen a governance
> model that allows the largest ISPs to dominate by having a huge voting
> status where the large players (mostly government run NIRs) get 64 votes
> vs. most smaller players only getting 1 vote. This antidemocratic system
> creates many barriers to good customer practices.
>
> Unfortunately, those in power are loathe to change the system, because it
> keeps them in power.
>
> Not all orgs have American-oriented financial power to justify paying for
> larger RIR allocations. I know many ISPs with tens of thousands of
> customers, they can't justify paying for large allocations to support the
> /48 idea, many of them even struggle to afford two /32s let alone anything
> larger. For example, in India, transport circuits+IP Transits etc alone are
> super expensive, way too expensive for the tiny ARPU over here to justify.
> And unfortunately, even though I at the very least advocate for /56 minimum
> on wireline services, end-users simply don't care, which disincentivize the
> ISP from investing any additional money into RIR fees for larger blocks to
> grant /48s. For additional context, many ISPs out there struggle to even
> purchase a router with decent FIB capacity for full tables, some struggle
> to even deploy layer 3 PE routers for the last-mile and still use some
> cheap Chinese OEM layer 2 switches with STP etc. So you can see why /48 for
> everybody simply just doesn't work, financially.
>
>
> Unfortunately, there’s little that can be done for unsustainable business
> models where the ARPU is insufficient for the costs of providing the
> service. Further, I think that the way APNIC has structured its cost model
> is horrible. India does have an NIR, not sure if that can be helpful for
> this or not.
>
> Some other folks from the industry have shared this dilemma in the past as
> well, including (but not limited to) AFRINIC-covered economies, reference
> <https://x.com/stubarea51/status/1571887490188955648>.
>
>
> Don’t get me started on the incredible corruption tax in AFRINIC.
>
> Owen
>
>
>