We shouldn't be surprised that a "one size fits all" approach
(where home users get the same amount of space by default as an IBM or
Microsoft) doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to some people.
I think this is a wrong comparison. The intent is to give a /48 to a
site where a site is either a private home or a building or an office or
a campus. In each case, the site is relatively compact physically and is
under a single administrative control. In a residential apartment
building, each apartment is a site. In an industrial complex, each unit
is a site. And so on.
The fact that some companies may choose to service all their sites via a
private network (or VPN) gatewayed through one (or a few) main site(s)
does not substantially change this. If a bank closes a branch and
somebody turns it into a restaurant, that restaurant will get a /48. The
bank could have gotten a /48 for the branch if they wanted to use
generic IPv6 Internet access as the underlying service for their VPN.
Consider the scenario where one bank merges with another bank. If both
banks have structured their newtork with /48 assignments from local
ISPs, the network merger is much simpler. They can even keep the IPv6
address assignments and ISP connectivity running. If they choose to hang
all their sites off a central gateway you are likely to find that one
bank assigned a /64 per branch and another assigned a /62, or maybe a
/120. Merging those two networks will be as messy as in the IPv4 world.
At the same time the continuing existance of RFC 3177 is not
going to stop RIRs from adopting policies that they think
make sense. Leaving
3177 on the books as it currently stands, strikes me as a
form of denial. It doesn't document existing practice, and at
a minimum, we should acknowledge that.
I believe that 3177 was intended to be guidance for RIRs and other
network architects. Given that the IETF is moving IPv6 into maintenance
mode, this RFC sorely needs to be updated to reflect the final design.
If you also want to have an informational RFC to document existing
practice, that is reasonable as a separate document, but it should not
simply document what the RIRs did in the first half of 2007. Instead it
should discuss the pros and cons of varying the HD ratio and,
implementing a separate assignment size for home users, and the choice
of /56 as that assignment size. Remember, the RIRs might rescind those
policies or dream up something new by the time 2008 rolls around.
--Michael Dillon
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