Speaking from personal experience, I’ve seen situations like this: 1. An organization knows they’ll need to adopt IPv6 eventually, and goes ahead and requests/receives a block without much thought to their allocation plan (/32 should be enough for anyone, right?)
2. Some time later, the org moves forward and starts building an address plan, and in the process realizes that given best practices (/48 minimum to end sites, aggregation on nibble boundaries, etc) that a /32 isn’t enough space for them. 3. Rightly or wrongly, the org expects they won’t qualify for a subsequent allocation under 6.5.3, so they break best practices to make do with that initial block. Or worse, they abandon the effort entirely. So, I feel like it would be reasonable for policy to allow for an organization to have a “redo” of their initial allocation request. One condition that may make sense is that this be on a request-then-return basis, although that might be moot if original sparse allocation is still sparse enough. -C > On Jun 25, 2026, at 15:16, William Herrin <[email protected]> wrote: > > Howdy, > > I didn't see any feedback on the draft policy rewriting section 6.5, > so I want to step back and solicit your opinions on what ARIN's IPv6 > policies should become. I'm going to ask some questions and break them > into separate message threads so that they can be followed separately > according to your interest. > > > The question for this thread is: How should ARIN handle second and > subsequent allocations of IPv6 addresses? > > Current policy says that your IPv6 addresses have to be employed and > in use according to somewhat complicated definitions of in-use in > order to qualify for additional addresses. ARIN will then try to > expand your netmask. If they can't because someone else's allocation > is in the way, they'll allocate a new, larger block and ask (but not > require) you to renumber out of the old one. > > This approach has a couple of odd artifacts. The amount of addresses > you're qualified for under the subsequent allocation criteria aren't > exactly the same as what you qualified for under the initial > allocation criteria. > > A different approach could be to have a single rule set to determine > how many addresses you're qualified for. If you want more addresses, > you apply the same rules you did originally to the current conditions > on your network. This would avoid inconsistencies but it would also > get rid of the "prove you're using IPv6 addresses efficiently" > requirement. > > Given that IPv6 addresses are plentiful and if we don't do anything > too silly they'll remain plentiful well into the foreseeable future, > do we need registrants to prove efficient use before resizing their > address allocation? That's a lot of paperwork for the registrant to > prepare and the analyst to examine, all of it blocking whatever > improvement the registrant wants to make to their IPv6 network. We > need it for IPv4 because folks have a financial motive to lie, but is > that true of IPv6? > > Anyway, what do you think? Continue to treat initial and subsequent > IPv6 allocations differently? Try to merge their criteria into > something more uniform? Your views are respectfully requested. > > Regards, > Bill Herrin > _______________________________________________ > ARIN-PPML > You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to > the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List ([email protected]). > Unsubscribe or manage your mailing list subscription at: > https://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml > Please contact [email protected] if you experience any issues. _______________________________________________ ARIN-PPML You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List ([email protected]). Unsubscribe or manage your mailing list subscription at: https://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml Please contact [email protected] if you experience any issues.
