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Comment by candiddevmike | Hacker News Reader

1. You most likely can't. You typically need to prove to a numbering authority that you need that many IPs (minimum /24) for X reason and you will be multihomed (connected to two+ ISPs) by Y date.

2. You are assigned a BGP Autonomous System Number (ASN) as part of the process. The IPs are assigned to your ASN.

3. You sign a peering contract with ISPs and peer with them using BGP on your router. You use your ASN to announce your block to have traffic routed to/from your router.

One of the tragedies of IPv6, IMO, is not having a better/streamlined process for end users to get allocations without all the red tape. There's tons of space, let's pretend it's the 90s and give away IP blocks to whoever asks. Either require ISPs to give static allocations or make it easier for getting a personal block. No, prefix delegation is not good enough.

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>One of the tragedies of IPv6, IMO, is not having a better/streamlined process for end users to get allocations without all the red tape. There's tons of space, let's pretend it's the 90s and give away IP blocks to whoever asks. Either require ISPs to give static allocations or make it easier for getting a personal block. No, prefix delegation is not good enough.

This is by design. If we let arbitrary routings of /64 blocks pollute the global routing table shit is going to go sideways as the rest of the net scales up and up. We made that mistake with IPv4 and the only reason our routers haven't gone thermonuclear keeping up with the announced routes is we literally ran out of address space.

We're not going to get the IPv6 equivalent of IPv4 /24s announced ever again. While minimum prefix lengths aren't hard enforced (yet), unless you have the means/reason to be multihomed using /48s you're pretty much going to be under the hierarchical routing of your transport or last mile provider.

Prefix delegation naturally follows physical hierarchy, keeping routing tables compact.

Mandating something like a static /56 (physical location locked) to be available at no extra cost if the customer asks for it, would work fine, though. I'd even accept requiring this only for contracts that allow more than one customer device to access the Internet simultaneously. Yes, a phone plan with two SIMs on one contract would already trigger this.

It's a little tricky - the more unique v6 allocations we have, the more complex routing gets, and the more resources it needs.

Having a ton of people/businesses with their own announced and unaggregatable /48s would add a lot of entries to routing tables.

> 1. You most likely can't. You typically need to prove to a numbering authority that you need that many IPs (minimum /24) for X reason and you will be multihomed (connected to two+ ISPs) by Y date.

If you're asking for a minimum sized range, you don't have to justify more than one ip. It's not super hard to find somewhere where you can be multihomed either, although it's unlikely to be at your home. (Maybe ask isn't exactly the right verb, assuming ARIN/RIPE are out of addresses, you're asking for them to process a transfer that you paid/will pay the current responsible party for)

There is still some anxiety about the size of the global routing table. Handing out IPv6 prefixes for free would make the growth much harder to control. (Not that there is much control beyond RIR membership fees.)

Also, there is no organization that can require anything of an ISP’s addressing plan. The IETF and the RIRs are associations, not governing bodies.

> Either require ISPs to give static allocations

Just buy service which does what you actually want - rather than insisting it should be mandatory which means everybody has to pay for it. I have static allocations (both IPv6 and, very small, IPv4) because I care. Most people don't care.

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