[rpd] IPv6 as a criteria in IPv4 Soft Landing AFPUB-2026-v6-001-DRAFT01.

Tue Jun 30 10:09:03 UTC 2026

Hi Jordi,
Further to below and the discussion in Kenya:

I am not wanting to get into the rights and wrongs of IPv6 deployment (we all know it is the right thing to do) and there are many things that we can debate as to what should one be doing verses reality

  1.  The proposal relies on to much manual intervention:
     *   this is a manual process between AFRINIC and the member.
     *   Not sure the practicality of this level of monitoring for many smaller ISPs. You say it is cheap, but there are always costs associated. Smaller ISPs are more focussed on building a business then netflow etc. (and don’t say that they need to be monitoring anyway – maybe they are or maybe they aren’t)
  2.  Customer profile:
     *   Broadband/home users aren’t a problem, there will be some traffic that will work over v6. But again, that depends on the ability of the FNO to be able to support IPV6. Sadly in South Africa, this is still not the case.
     *   Where customer profile is B2B, the ISP as the provider is not in a position to be able to dictate their security and IP policies.
     *   IPv6 adoption at the customer is a different discussion and becomes commercial. While ISPs have v4 space, If the ISP dictates v6 usage, then the customer will go so someone who doesn’t. that is the free world.

Jordi, you keep beating on at how simple this is, yes, in your experience, your country, your customer base. That doesn’t translate into other regions. I do agree that we need better uptake. I have no issue with requiring v6 usage, but it needs to be practical, positive, sustainable and most important commercially viable – we can’t force our customers to do something they don’t want to.

My 2c

Saul

From: Jaco Kroon via RPD <rpd at afrinic.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 30 June 2026 10:43
To: jordi.palet at consulintel.es; rpd at afrinic.net
Subject: Re: [rpd] IPv6 as a criteria in IPv4 Soft Landing AFPUB-2026-v6-001-DRAFT01.

Hi Jordi,

As per my previous emails on the matter I agree with the message, but based on the below, not with the implementation.  Mostly referencing your original email

I think the way you're proposing adds a significant cost to smaller network operators in particular which is money that could be better spent actually rolling out IPv6 or in other ways improving networks.

I'm not sure the alternative options.  As an example, 100% of our clients, primarily consumer clients, has IPv6 available for use from ourselves.  We offer IPv6 on the entirety of our active ethernet networks by way of active RA + DHCPv6, as well as all dial-in options.  In spite of pressuring customers, we find they actively switch off IPv6 where they see it, and they will actively inform you when you request they switch it on to back off or they'll move to a different ISP that won't put this pressure on them.

Various different reasons are provided, ranging from the absurd to the more absurd.  The middle-arguments are in the "IPv6 puts public addresses on my devices and I don't want that".

Do you want to now punish the smaller players because they're struggling to get to 50% IPv6 uptake?  Even with the above in place, we're struggling to keep it active at >20% clients that at least take a PD from us.  Whether or not that's then actually deployed internally in their network is yet another matter.

My problem with the proposal isn't that it needs to be deployed, we have it deployed.  There is one single /29 network where we have in play that doesn't have IPv6 also deployed, mostly because of the function thereof IPv6 cannot functionally be deployed there (the moment it makes sense you can be guaranteed we'll have it done in a week).  Therefore I consider our network to be as close to 100% deployed as can be, however, our downstream networks is a different matter, with as stated, around 20%.

You're now forcing me towards LNS because I won't be able to obtain additional resources because my customers are being stubborn.  This just incurs further costs, both in terms of capex to procure (likely build) the equipment as well as opex in terms of running costs (primarily rack space and electricity, but also support staff training and additional complexity).

Further in threads there were mention about top 25 sites etc ... all of that is highly impractical to measure for most networks.

Kind regards,
Jaco
On 2026/05/28 12:21, jordi.palet--- via RPD wrote:
Hi Jaco,

Tks, next version will use: “Any IPv4 request must be done with a simultaneous IPv6 request if the requesting party does not already have IPv6 space.” This may depend on the impact analysis inputs, of course.

About the determination/measurement that this is being done, let me explain how I see this.

The existing 6.5.1.1<http://6.5.1.1> (for LIRs) and 6.8.2, already set the conditions to be met. AFRINIC already has, in both cases, a 12 months period to confirm the deployment. May be is not sufficiently clear there if AFRINIC should do something if that’s not actually done. We aren’t talking there only about announcing the prefix, but also in the case of LIRs, about making assignments to end-sites, and the text is clear, /48s, nothing different. There is no reason for using different sizes for different type of customers on that text. There is no technical reason at all for not doing it correctly, however, this is a discussion for amending that part of the policy, not for this proposal.

What this proposal wants to make sure is that you *actually*, *following existing policy*, if you get IPv4, you really deploy IPv6 in 12 months. To reinforce it I explicitly mention “In addition …”, as you said. Note that “in addition” section enforces a more detailed work from the member requesting IPv4, to justify a credible IPv6 addressing and deployment plan, this will be accepted or not by AFRINIC, as with any request evaluation.

For example, in many RIRs, not just AFRINIC, I’ve observed that many members get by default a /32, even if they have 800.000 end-sites. Clearly wrong, they didn’t have done any real addressing plan and they will end up providing a single /64 to each end-site. If they do it correctly, they will soon discover why they should use /48s, so with a /32 they can only cover around 50.000 customers, which means that typically for 800.000 of customers (depending on the topological distribution of the network) will mean that they need a /27-/28.

I don’t think nobody can say “deploy” is not clear. If this is the case, we can improve it, something like “and IPv6 is actually being used”. We can even set a minimum level of traffic, such as 50% for example? Those that have deployed IPv6 know that, at least in the case of residential and cellular customers, because most of the traffic (typically 75-90%) is from big CDNs, caches, and contend providers (all google, all Meta, Akamai and all the other CDNs), already provide IPv6, when you turn on IPv6 in an end-site, the IPv6 traffic of that end-site becomes 75%-90% IPv6, in turn the total ISP traffic reaches similar levels.

So asking for 50% seems to me conservative, but I’m happy for lower levels, if we agree that we can ask for more later on. We can even consider something like 25% after 12 months, 50% after 24 months, 75% after 48 months. Just an example.

Finally, as we have many policies that AFRINIC not necessarily is measuring the compliance, that’s what the other proposal (compliance dashboard) was already trying to resolve, now in a “light” version.

This proposal also added a trigger (failure to comply) to ensure that abuse (requesting IPv4, but then not deploying IPv6) can enact the RSA terms, because clearly shows that there is a policy breach.

By the way, dynamic prefixes in IPv6 is broken, terrible idea, specially if there are power outages.

I suggest to read what, hopefully in a few months, will become in RFC/BCP a successor of RIPE690:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-v6ops-prefix-to-end-sites/<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-v6ops-prefix-to-end-sites/>

Regards,
Jordi

@jordipalet

El 28 may 2026, a las 11:43, Jaco Kroon <jaco at uls.co.za><mailto:jaco at uls.co.za> escribió:

Hi Jordi,

I support the principle very much.  Practicality may be a different story, yes, must implement v6, however:

How do you determine/measure that?  I think your "In addition" section addresses this to a degree.

Merely advertising IPv6 space?  Sure, that's easy, but it doesn't mean I have to actually make that available to customers.

Re proposed text, the word "However, " doesn't add value, merely "Any IPv4 request must be done with a simultaneous IPv6 request if the requesting party does not already have IPv6 space."

This does also be the question, it seems 6.5.1.1.3 states that you must give /48s to end sites - we do distinguish between business and home users, for business we happily do /48 if so required (at least we reserve a /48 per site minimum), but for home users we generally do dynamically allocated /56 (but will again do /48 on request) - would this imply failure to comply with your proposed policy?  If so, should the proposed policy be adjusted, or 6.5.1.1.3?

For PI space (6.8.2.2.d) - what does deployed mean?

Kind regards,
Jaco Kroon

On 2026/05/28 10:28, jordi.palet--- via RPD wrote:

Hi all,

Somehow this is a response to Sami input on a previous proposal.

This way we can split the problem space in 2 proposals, which may reach consensus without depending one on the other.

So we have a very basic question: If we believe that the members that receive IPv4 out of the Soft Landing policy, must implement IPv6, or not?

Regards,

Jordi

@jordipalet

El 28 may 2026, a las 10:05, Darwin Da Costa <dacostadarwin at gmail.com><mailto:dacostadarwin at gmail.com> escribió:

Dear PDWG,

We have received a new draft policy proposal - IPv6 as a criteria in IPv4 Soft Landing ID AFPUB-2026-v6-001-DRAFT01 from author Jordi Palet Martinez. The proposal contents are published at:

https://afrinic.net/afpub-2026-v6-001-draft01<https://afrinic.net/afpub-2026-v6-001-draft01>

We encourage you to take some time to go through the proposal contents and  provide feedback as follows:

a)Do you support or oppose the proposal?

b) If you oppose the proposal, state your reasons?

c) Is there anything in the proposal that is not clear?

d) What changes could be made to this proposal to make it more effective?

Regards,

Vincent Ngundi & Darwin Da Costa

AFRINIC PDWG Co-Chairs

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