Ok, back up a second....
126/8 Jan 05 APNIC (whois.apnic.net)
inetnum: 126.0.0.0 - 126.255.255.255
netname: BBTEC
descr: Japan Nation-wide Network of Softbank BB Corp.
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20050208
i thought the decade of giving class A's to large corporates had long since
passed.. we've got some major network rollout coming up, i need an extra 16
million IPs, so can i get one?
wtf?
Steve
Stephen,
If you can justify a /8, ARIN will allocate one to you (not that I speak for ARIN or anything, but that's how things work). Presumably Softbank BB justified the /8 APNIC allocated to them.
Rgds,
-drc
Yahoo BB is one of the largest ISPs in Japan, I saw a slide where it was said they had 11 million subscribers.
Hi David,
I realise that but:
1. Softbank BB is not on my radar of likely /8 candidates (of course, geography
may be the reason for that)
2. We know cable companies, dsl providers and mobile companies can use this many
IPs, but they generally seem to make use of NAT and IPv6. If everyone in this
category who could justify a /8 applied and received them we might be in real
trouble with our IPv4 space.
I had said elsewhere this was unprecedented but was then pointed at 73.0.0.0/9,
73.128.0.0/10 which is Comcast assigned in April. I'm surprised none of these
assignemtns have shown up on mailing lists..
Steve
I don't know about APNIC, but ARIN's rules are generally structured to make justification of a /8 all but impossible. I suspect this is actually a typo or misreading of some sort.
jms
I suspect this was done on the condition that Comcast migrate users from other IP ranges into 73/8.5, then return those older ranges to ARIN for reassignment. The net effect would be that Comcast could significantly reduce the number of routes they'd have to announce into the global BGP table. 12+ million addresses is a lot of cable modems 
I don't work for Comcast, so this is purely conjecture on my part.
jms
I know nothing much about Softbank BB, but I do know that there is nothing in the APNIC policy which says organisations need to use NAT or RFC1918 addresses or both in their networks. It is perfectly consistent with the current APNIC policies for every network interface to have a globally-unique address.
I would expect every ISP who is able to demonstrate a justifiable need for a /8 allocation be getting one. I'm not sure why you think there are ISPs who can justify a /8 that are not asking for them.
I also don't know about "generally" in your first sentence above; personally I have never had DSL or GPRS service from anybody who wouldn't give me a globally-unique address and I've never seen a DSL or GPRS service which would give me any kind of IPv6 address.
Are things different in the RIPE region?
Joe
(slightly queasy, imagining the backscatter and worm probe love you'd suddenly attract when you advertised your yet-to-be-used /8 for the first time)
Steve,
1. Softbank BB is not on my radar of likely /8 candidates (of course, geography
may be the reason for that)
They are one of the largest ISPs in Japan and Japan (at least certain parts, like Tokyo and Osaka) is _significantly_ more advanced in terms of broadband penetration than the US.
2. We know cable companies, dsl providers and mobile companies can use this many
IPs, but they generally seem to make use of NAT and IPv6. If everyone in this
category who could justify a /8 applied and received them we might be in real
trouble with our IPv4 space.
This is, of course, why IPv6 has the traction it has. I used to be much more sanguine about IPv4 address space availability. That was long ago. Given growth patterns, the only way IPv4 will continue to be usable is by the use of NAT. For various reasons (some good, some not), NAT is seen as the spawn of the Devil. As such, IPv4 with more bits becomes less non-attractive.
I had said elsewhere this was unprecedented but was then pointed at 73.0.0.0/9,
73.128.0.0/10 which is Comcast assigned in April. I'm surprised none of these
assignemtns have shown up on mailing lists..
Well, there has been a flurry of /8s being allocated by the IANA to the RIRs which are announced to the various operational mailing lists. I think it safe to assume those /8 allocations are not being done to redistribute the remaining free pool to the RIRs...
[In case anyone is wondering, no, I do not have any inside knowledge of this as an ARIN Board of Trustees Member -- the Board is explicitly segregated from the day-to-day operational aspects of ARIN]
Rgds,
-drc
I would guesstimate about 8 Terabyte per day, judging from the traffic
I saw towards a virgin /21 (1 GByte per day).
Regards,
Daniel
1. Softbank BB is not on my radar of likely /8 candidates (of course,
geography may be the reason for that)
Indeed, ASPAC is off most of our radars. 
Given the size of Softbanks subscriber base, I'm not surprised about the
/8 alloc at all.
2. We know cable companies, dsl providers and mobile companies can use
this many IPs, but they generally seem to make use of NAT and IPv6.
So you ask folks to resort to hacks like NAT or force IPv6-only to their
users when there is still a lack-of-content problem there? Can you show
me your business plan draft for that? I'm curious.
If everyone in this category who could justify a /8 applied and
received them we might be in real trouble with our IPv4 space.
We are already, but you seem to have your head firmly sticking in the
sand, together with the content providers.
It looks like IPv4 space really needs to "run out" before the
residential access ISPs are really being forced to IPv6 and thus the
content providers wake up too.
BTW, Softbank got 2400:2000::/20.
I had said elsewhere this was unprecedented but was then pointed at
73.0.0.0/9, 73.128.0.0/10 which is Comcast assigned in April. I'm
surprised none of these assignemtns have shown up on mailing lists..
Why should they? Business as usual.
I hope that more ISPs stop doing NAT/RFC1918 and just request whatever
they need.
Regards,
Daniel
Are things different in the RIPE region?
Not in this part of the RIPE region (the UK).
Dynamically assigned publicly routable IPv4 addresses are the norm for
residential broadband services, though some providers offer static
addressing as an option, I think a couple of low end services use NAT,
and one small provider (that I'm aware of) offers IPv6.
GPRS is invariably NATed IPv4 here, I think. As long as you're paying
by the byte, it's not clear that you'd want a publicly routable
address.
-roy
So you ask folks to resort to hacks like NAT or force IPv6-only to their users
when there is still a lack-of-content problem there? Can you show me your
business plan draft for that? I'm curious.
ok, thats not what i mean.. i am saying /8,/9 etc are not normal
> If everyone in this category who could justify a /8 applied and
> received them we might be in real trouble with our IPv4 space.We are already, but you seem to have your head firmly sticking in the
sand, together with the content providers.
i thought we had years to go according to some decent sources?
It looks like IPv4 space really needs to "run out" before the residential
access ISPs are really being forced to IPv6 and thus the content providers
wake up too.BTW, Softbank got 2400:2000::/20.
> I had said elsewhere this was unprecedented but was then pointed at
> 73.0.0.0/9, 73.128.0.0/10 which is Comcast assigned in April. I'm surprised
> none of these assignemtns have shown up on mailing lists..Why should they? Business as usual.
I hope that more ISPs stop doing NAT/RFC1918 and just request whatever they
need.
how long does it take such an org to use 16 million IPs? based on the above
comment of '..need to run out' should they not maybe get 1million then come back
when they use it all to give some other folks a chance?
i'm not suggesting denying anyone the IPs they require but i am suggesting we
shouldnt steam ahead into exhaustion either
Steve
> So you ask folks to resort to hacks like NAT or force IPv6-only to
> their users when there is still a lack-of-content problem there?
> Can you show me your business plan draft for that? I'm curious.ok, thats not what i mean.. i am saying /8,/9 etc are not normal
Not common, but not !normal, IMHO. As others stated, Softbank has some
11 million subscribers. What if they plan to get rid of the dynamic IP
thing and offer proper static addresses by default? Then a /8 is not at
all "weird" but just necessary.
> > If everyone in this category who could justify a /8 applied and
> > received them we might be in real trouble with our IPv4 space.
>
> We are already, but you seem to have your head firmly sticking in the
> sand, together with the content providers.i thought we had years to go according to some decent sources?
Famous last words when driving down a long road towards a firm wall of
concrete. You want to rush then? Do you wait for the pain to fully
extend? I prefer orderly, planned, concious migrations, not a state of
"uhm, we cannot get new IPv4 address space anymore, and the grey market
prices for IPv4 space is skyrocketing... I cannot afford it anymore and
our customers switch to ISPs who can still".
I thing that things will become very very nasty when we not only see the
wall on our map but actually see it coming quickly on the horizont and
warning signs at the side of the road tell something about "last exit to
IPv6 in x miles. Toll applicable.".
> I hope that more ISPs stop doing NAT/RFC1918 and just request whatever they
> need.how long does it take such an org to use 16 million IPs?
With 11 million subscribers? How long does it take to write and run a
script to associate a unique IP to every customer in the RADIUS database?
based on the above comment of '..need to run out' should they not
maybe get 1million then come back when they use it all to give some
other folks a chance?
A chance for what? You can get IPs for your customers too. Have a
million customers, get a million addresses (and more, because of the
hierarchy tax).
IPv4 will exhaust. Get yourself comfortable with this idea and plan to
be fully ready for IPv6 service way before that happens.
i'm not suggesting denying anyone the IPs they require but i am
suggesting we shouldnt steam ahead into exhaustion either
Well, I'm quite sure ARIN didn't hand out the addresses just to "steam
ahead in to exhaustion". Unlike with IPv6 where your customer count is
enough to justify address space, in IPv4 you also have to "proof" that
you will actually use the address space too. So I speculate that they
will have provided enough evidence that they are going to actually use
this IP space within the next couple of years. Their IPv6 allocation
pretty nicely aligns to their subscriber count btw. According to
HD-Ratio you'll need (IIRC) >5.5 million customers or so for a /20.
Perhaps some Softbank folks want to provide some insight in the plans
surrounding this chunk of IPv4 address space?
Regards,
Daniel
Hi David,
I realise that but:1. Softbank BB is not on my radar of likely /8 candidates (of course, geography
may be the reason for that)
perhaps, remember that japan has +100m 'users' on them islands, eh?
"we are planning a dsl network rollout to the home island of japan,
expected subscriber base is 15M users conservatively"
now I get a /8. simple, see?
2. We know cable companies, dsl providers and mobile companies can use this many
IPs, but they generally seem to make use of NAT and IPv6. If everyone in this
category who could justify a /8 applied and received them we might be in real
trouble with our IPv4 space.
Actually, I think it'd be GOOD if the v4 space got very scarce very
fast... it'd make people stop putzing around with v6 amd mae it production
for real. (perhaps even someone would think about how to multihome in v6?
in a workable manner)
I had said elsewhere this was unprecedented but was then pointed at 73.0.0.0/9,
73.128.0.0/10 which is Comcast assigned in April. I'm surprised none of these
assignemtns have shown up on mailing lists..
So, makes you wonder:
1) comcast doesn't care about subscribers getting 'partial' connectivity
due to acls/bogon-filters/blah
2) comcast fights this battle silently, with battle hardened network
ninjas, silent killers of bogon filtering
3) the mythical bogon filtering 'problem' isn't really a problem?
(sort of poking fun, mostly being serious...)
-Chris
> 2. We know cable companies, dsl providers and mobile companies can use
> this many IPs, but they generally seem to make use of NAT and IPv6.So you ask folks to resort to hacks like NAT or force IPv6-only to their
users when there is still a lack-of-content problem there? Can you show
me your business plan draft for that? I'm curious.
I meant to ask this at a nanog or this IETF... why don't some of the
larger content providers (google, msn, yahoo, to name 3 examples) put AAAA
records in for their maint content pieces? why don't they get v6
connectivity from their providers (that offer such services) ? There are
starting to be more and more folks with v6 connectivity... it'd be
interesting as a way to drive usage on v6, eh?
BTW, Softbank got 2400:2000::/20.
holy freeholy! good thing v6 space is 'infinite' eh?
-Chris
I meant to ask this at a nanog or this IETF... why don't some of the
larger content providers (google, msn, yahoo, to name 3 examples) put AAAA
records in for their maint content pieces? why don't they get v6
connectivity from their providers (that offer such services) ? There are
starting to be more and more folks with v6 connectivity... it'd be
interesting as a way to drive usage on v6, eh?
(I work for a not-quite-as-large content player. These are my own
opinions, but this is what I'd tell my empolyer if they asked.)
- We can't get provider-independent IPv6 space (without pretending
to be a service provider.)
- None of our transit providers appear to provide IPv6 transit.
Or if they do, they keep it pretty quiet. (Does UUNET?)
- Most of our content is delivered via load balancer hardware
that would also need to support IPv6. Last time I checked,
it didn't.
- There are (perceived to be) more important things to spend
our limited resources on.
Steve
...
- None of our transit providers appear to provide IPv6 transit.
Or if they do, they keep it pretty quiet. (Does UUNET?)
...
ISTM that one of their incarnations briefed this to us as a product,
years ago. [Chris?]
> I meant to ask this at a nanog or this IETF... why don't some of the
> larger content providers (google, msn, yahoo, to name 3 examples) put AAAA
> records in for their maint content pieces? why don't they get v6
> connectivity from their providers (that offer such services) ? There are
> starting to be more and more folks with v6 connectivity... it'd be
> interesting as a way to drive usage on v6, eh?(I work for a not-quite-as-large content player. These are my own
opinions, but this is what I'd tell my empolyer if they asked.)- We can't get provider-independent IPv6 space (without pretending
to be a service provider.)
oh, and multi-6/shim6 isn't going to help you do PA space and multihome?
really? it isn't? hmm, time to get vocal i suppose, eh?
- None of our transit providers appear to provide IPv6 transit.
Or if they do, they keep it pretty quiet. (Does UUNET?)
we do, verio does, sprint does... at&t might (my memory is dim there,
sorry) L3 does. Some is more 'interim' tunnel based access unless you are
in/near the right place on the respective map/net... others are 'native'
(verio comes to mind in this regard)
- Most of our content is delivered via load balancer hardware
that would also need to support IPv6. Last time I checked,
it didn't.
will the v6 access really be enough to require LB's? or are they there for
other reasons (global lb for content close to customers, regionalized
content) perhaps reasons which would matter 'less' in an initial v6 world
where you were getting the lb's fixed by their vendor? (or finding a
vendor that supports v6 lb?)
- There are (perceived to be) more important things to spend
our limited resources on.
ah, the ever popular: "Waiting for the killer application" again... sure,
I understand this.
that might have been vbns+... but uunet proper supports v6 in one form or
another currently...
If you have a large web site (say top 2000) or mail system ( or other
apps) then you will almost certainly have your connections going via a
load balancer. You have specialized servers for front end, images,
database, data, caching, authentication etc. You'll probably have multiple
examples of each, load balanced so that if one goes down nobody notices.
Here is a simple example:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimedia-servers-2005-04-12.png
Creating a seperate instance or path though all that for IPv6 is probably
going to be hard if it is all setup for everything to go one way.
On the other hand if your load balancer is IPv6 aware then the stuff
behind it might not need to be since it can NAT incoming request to ipv4.