Re: [v6ops] I-D Action: draft-ietf-v6ops-unique-ipv6-prefix-per-host-07.txt

[Simon Hobson <[e-mail]>]

Sander Steffann <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Most (all?) RIRs allow a /48 per site. I haven't seen ISPs give one /48 to a customer and then divide it over the connections ("sites") that that customer has. It far more convenient for everybody to just give each connection/site a separate /48. And business-ISP really shouldn't give any customer any less.

What about businesses with multiple sites (or even, just multiple buildings on a large site), connected by leased lines or whatever, and one central internet connection ? It's not that uncommon. Some time ago (different job) I managed a network with 45 sites and only one internet connection - 40 of them were retail outlets, using dial on demand ISDN, and the ONLY networking they had was back to head office for PoS systems. OK, not typical, but as I say, not all that rare either.
These days it would be mostly done with DSL lines and VPNs - but we'd still not be allowing local use of the internet connection at each store.

As I've been pointing out - there are comments along the lines of "we must not block future innovation". Yet at the same time there are limitation being hardcoded in that do exactly that. Just think about it, even if the entire /48 is used on one network, then that only gives 16 bits for host selection - with 60+ bits "wasted". While at the same time there are those saying that anything less than 64 bits to pick an address from is inadequate.