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

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

On 08/08/2017 06:13, james woodyatt wrote:
> On Aug 5, 2017, at 20:21, Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> […] If there's a problem, it's not in the area of a shortfall of /128s.
> 
> This is where I point out that diamonds, unlike grains of sand, are just sufficiently uncommon that monopoly power admits the inducement of artificial scarcity to inflate market prices. 
> 
>> If there's a shortfall of /64s, it's human error.
> 
> 
> There is more to the analogy than meets the eye, i.e. the error may be one of political and economic philosophy, and not a technical one, and moreover, the analogy may break down around the ways that numbers are not the same as stones. After all, if the point of the game is to create an artificial scarcity of numbers, what difference does it make where you put the prefix boundary in the process? You can set it anywhere you like and achieve the same effect.

Exactly correct. As engineers who care about making the Internet work better, we should certainly work to avoid artificial scarcity, having created IPv6 to overcome a real scarcity. But *we* can't actually prevent intentional creation of artificial scarcity - that's an economic and fair trade issue which will play out in RIR policy and beyond.

That said, I want to support what David Farmer said recently:

> So, the /64 prefix per host model solves some important problems for this,
> and maybe other use cases too. But, that doesn't mean it should be viewed
> as a universal replacement for the traditional multiple host per subnet
> model for all use cases we have. There are plenty of use cases left where
> traditional multiple host per subnet model still works just fine.

There's nothing wrong with either model and they will both find their place in the market.

    Brian