Biggest mistake for IPv6: It's not backwards compatible, developers admit

[Leo Vegoda]

On 31/03/2009 10:00, "S.P.Zeidler" <spz at serpens.de> wrote:

[...]

> Traditionally, in the RIPE region (not counting historical PI from before
> PA was invented), the way to get PI space in v4 is to get an AS first
> (or mostly, to get an AS and the PI space to route with it as a bundle).

I recall networks qualifying for exactly as much IPv4 PI space as they would
qualify for PA space without a multi-homing requirement. So very small
networks might well only get a /29 of PI space.

This high granularity of PI assignments was a possibly a disincentive to an
excessive number of requests. Or it might have encouraged people to inflate
the interface count to something more than 128, ensuring a /24 assignment.
In any case, it looks like the number of PI assignments exceeded the number
of PA allocations back in 2003:

http://ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-54/presentations/RIPE_NCC_Statistics.pdf
(slide 9)

I note that RIPE policy proposal 2006-05 would set the minimum assignment
size to /24 in some multi-homing cases. On the other hand, things seem to be
changing in a way that assigns a higher ongoing cost to PI assignments,
which might balance out the equation somewhat.

Time will tell.

Regards,

Leo