new RIR IPv6 Assignment and Allocation Policy draft (16Apr99)

[Michael H. Lambert]

I do not wish to discuss the merits of a /35 slow-start allocation.  I
would like to suggest that an initial /35 allocation could cause undue
hardship to sites already on the 6bone.  As an example, Abilene (a
backbone network for the Internet2 project) has an addressing scheme
which was developed with RFC2450 in mind.  It assumes a /29 sTLA (or a
/29 pTLA from the 6bone) and uses a 19-bit NLA field.  The NLA field is
subdivided; the high-order subfield is allocated using the left-to-right 
procedure described in Marc Blanchet's Internet Draft.  Thus, migrating
from a /29 pTLA to a /35 sTLA would require us to reengineer our
addressing.

I propose the following:  Provided that it meets the requirements for
sTLA allocation, an entity which has a 6bone pTLA allocation at the time 
of the adoption of the RIR allocation rules will be allocated a /29 sTLA 
rather than a /35 sTLA.

Fewer than 60 pTLAs have been allocated.  Doubtless not all of these
would qualify for sTLAs.  Thus the impact of allocating them /29s should 
be minimal.

Michael

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| Michael H. Lambert, Network Engineer                Phone: +1 412 268-4960 |
| Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center                    FAX:   +1 412 268-8200 |
| 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA  15213            lambert@psc.edu        |
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