Please don't take away ULA.
You really think that doing ULA according to the RFCs (collision
avoidance algorithm and all) is easier than filling out a form at HE?
REALLY?Yes.
It's hard enough to sell ipv6 for LAN without adding having to get a tunnel, register with a RIR, whatever else.
ULA gives us the option to spin up ipv6 networks without anyone else being involved. We have to be able to make private networks without contacting anyone, and we will go back to ipv4 if that's our only option.
I doubt anyone is taking it away, pointless and useless as it is.
Owen
I'm not sure I'd say it's pointless and useless. It's free, which gives it
at least some point/use case, versus IPv6 space obtained from an RIR where,
at least in ARIN's case, you have fees associated with that. I'm lucky
enough to have a /32 from ARIN for the networks I work on, so we're not
stretched for space or worried about deploying ULA. For a small
organization where even a /48 would be a luxury, and with no good native
IPv6 carriers available locally (still plenty of places like that),
deploying IPv6 on ULA space may be the stepping stone they need until other
options become open to them.
Exactly what Matt Harris says here... ULA is free. Space obtained from ARIN
is not. You want to discourage someone from doing the right thing, charge a
lot for that.
Matthew Kaufman
Space from tunnel brokers is also free.
Owen
For myriad reasons (added latency, reliability concerns related to relying
on traffic over a connection which doesn't offer an SLA or recourse for
downtime, lack of support on ISP-provided CPE, etc) a tunnel broker
connection may not be a feasible choice for all organizations and
networks. This brings us back to my previous point.
Another problem with tunnel brokers is that they are sometimes flagged by content providers as being some sort of "proxy", and consequently won't send you traffic. Notably, Netflix.
Section 3 of https://tunnelbroker.net/tos.php
It isn't "free". It may be included with a service that is currently
available for free, but they aren't providing free address space for an
unlimited period.
Matthew Kaufman
The ARIN fee schedule for an ASN and a /40 has an amortized annual cost approximately equal to a 2TB hard drive. Is that really too much to bear for a business running a critical network service?
Once again, you’re talking about usability of the addresses for internet connectivity.
I don’t understand the relevance since we’re talking about a GUA based substitute for ULA.
What am I missing?
Owen
Sure… You have to maintain the tunnel or they may reassign/reallocate the address. Here’s the reality of that, however:
1. Unless you care about reaching the customer they reassigned it to from your network, you don’t care.
2. Using it for ULA in addition to the tunnel isn’t really prohibited by that. It’s a gray area, I’ll admit.
3. Sure, they can cancel the service at any time, but you get what you pay for. It saves you $100/year
while it lasts.
Owen
Again, how is this relevant if you are using the space as if it were ULA?
Owen
I'm not sure where you're getting the $100 figure from, ARIN's minimum fee
for an allocation is $250/year (for a /40 or smaller block) on top of
membership fees of $500/yr, so that's $750/yr to get a /48 from the North
American RIR (which is the only one I'm looking at today given that the
context is the nanog list). Additionally, tunnel providers can and have
shut down permanently at random - SixXS was among the largest providers,
and they shut down operations entirely last year. So any folks using space
from them had to renumber, either on to another tunnel provider's space, or
to ULA. Re-numbering has associated costs, which in the case we're
pointing to here, could've been saved had they deployed on ULA space
instead.
You don’t need an allocation. Get an assignment.
Owen
End Users have a different fee structure:
Annual maintenance fees are $100 for each IPv4 address block, $100 for
each IPv6 address block, and $100 USD for each ASN assigned to the
organization.
If you just have an IPv6 block, it's only $100/year.
Petition the RIR's (and IETF?) to set up a HE like service for 'micro' end-users? Self-registration and $4.99/year gets you a pseudo-GUA /48 to keep forever but currently understood as not accepted by your ISP. Some day maybe there will be an efficient way to provide global reachability.
Dave B.