[AfriNIC-rpd] AfriNIC Policy Proposal: IPv6 ProviderIndependent (PI) Assignment for End-Sites

[Colin Alston]

McTim wrote:
> Provider lock in is a consequence of aggregation.  IP addresses aren't
> property, they can't be "owned", therefore they are not "their"
> addresses.
> 
> The "We hate renumbering" argument is not sufficient IMHO to undo the
> many years of IETF work, where the notion of IPv6 PI was debated and
> decided against.

The fact has been well established that for organizations where (for 
political or other reasons) provider lock-in is unacceptable and where 
LIR status is unobtainable or unnecessary, there is a genuine 
requirement for PI allocations. Most organizations are reasonably 
protected from this since they use NAT on IPv4 and use public 
addressing sparingly - switching ISP's is then very easy. IPv6 changes 
this. If you saw how some providers in South Africa treat customers 
with domain names in order to lock them into services, you would be as 
scared as I am about giving them total control over our banks IP 
addressing.

For large organizations who also would like to move faster on IPv6 
uptake than their ISP's (which isn't hard...), it is of great help to 
be able to obtain a PI allocation in order to move forward before 
ability to peer is obtained - again, this goes hand in hand with my 
argument against labor costs of renumbering. In fact by your own 
argument, RFC3177 asserts this reasoning.

You seem to also be of the understanding that any of us actually have 
access to PA space. TENet (which is not a public provider) aside, this 
is unfortunately not a reality for us.
PI should help remove the "chicken and egg" scenario by giving easy 
access to address space to certain content providers and critical 
infrastructures. ISP's can no longer complain about lack of benefit in 
IPv6 peering on the basis that content density is low if critical 
services are the first to adopt and publicise this fact, the market 
will open drastically. Until that happens, people will continue to sit 
in the dark and work their way around the terrible NAT's already 
inflicting among other things, our mobile providers.

We must try to stop dancing around this issue for once and be brave.

-- 
Colin Alston <colin at thusa.co.za>                ______
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