[governance] IPv6 address allocations to DOD

Ian Peter ian.peter at ianpeter.com
Fri Jan 29 01:08:02 EST 2010 

Well after all of that, my two basic questions remain. I appreciate John
Currans hands are tied, and that ARIN is acting in the best interests of the
Internet community, but my questions remain.

How many IP addresses have been reserved for US military use? (in plain,
simple numerics). John only tells me what has been allocated, while
mentioning more have been reserved. Its the latter figure I am interested
in, and as yet I don't have a denial or correction of the
42,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 figure advanced at

royal.pingdom.com/.../the-us-department-of-defense-has-42-million-billion-
billion-billion-ipv6-addresses/

Nor do I have any denial that this is the largest allocation or reservation
to date.

What I do have, following McTims research, is that the justification appears
to be a concept called NCW (Network-centric warfare). Would it not be fair,
then, to allocate and reserve blocks of the same size for the military of
each nation state so that we have a level playing (sic) field for
network-centric warfare? Or would we rather create a couple of dominant
nations and then aim for a network-centric warfare non proliferation treaty?

I remain suspicious that the shoulders of ARIN were lent on not too gently
in the reservation of  42,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
addresses (or whatever the figure is). I can't see that the allocation would
have been made otherwise.

But we may never know.

Ian Peter





> From: McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: <governance at lists.cpsr.org>, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:34:55 +0300
> To: <governance at lists.cpsr.org>, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com>
> Cc: John Curran <jcurran at arin.net>
> Subject: Re: [governance] IPv6 address allocations to DOD
> 
> Hi again Ian,
> 
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 11:20 PM, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:
>> Thanks John, I appreciate your reply. But for the record, can you confirm
>> exactly how many IP addresses have been allocated and/or reserved for US
>> Dept of Defence?
> 
> The goal of a Public Network Information Databse such as ARIN WHOIS
> service is so you can find this information yourself.
> 
> It is John's job to make sure this information is available via WHOIS,
> but not to give you the actual net ranges.  You can do that yourself.
> 
>> (not all of us can read /16 or /13 and make sense of it).
> 
> The RIRs have this data available as well. Here is one link:
> 
> http://www.ripe.net/info/info-services/cidr.pdf
> 
>> It would be good to know the exact number. Can anyone give me authoritative
>> information on this
> 
> ARIN WHOIS can:
> 
> NetRange:   2608:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 -
> 2608:03FF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF
> CIDR:    2608:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000/22 as an example.
> 
> There are others I am sure, for example, H root server has a /48:
> 
> 2001:0500:0001:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 -
> 2001:0500:0001:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF:FFFF
> 
> (I can't believe I've just caved and done this for you)
> 
> , as media reports are widely different. Also, am I right
>> that this is the largest allocation made to date?
> 
> Probably, as the US DoD is the largest holder of IPv4 space, it stands
> to reason that they would have the same status in IPv6, no??
> 
>> 
>> I gather from your comments (and those passed on by McTim earlier) that an
>> application of this size lead to a considerable amount of discussion and
>> internal clarification before an allocation was made. Glad to hear it. But I
>> am still puzzled as to what the documented need would be for such a large
>> allocation.
> 
> Then perhaps you should Google a bit:
> http://ipv6.com/articles/military/Military-and-IPv6.htm
> http://www.usipv6.com/ppt/IPv6SummitPresentationFinalCaptDixon.pdf
> http://www.usipv6.com/2003arlington/presents/Marilyn_Kraus.pdf
> 
> Seriously, you MUST change your mindset when thinking about IPv6, its
> NOT the number of possible addresses, its the number of subnets.
> 
> Let's take the above /48 example for instance.  A /48 gives you 256
> /56 subnets to assign.  256 is the number of IPs in a IPv4 /24, or if
> you are old school, a Class C network.  H root probably only uses a
> handful of these /56s (maybe only one, and then perhaps only one
> single address of the entire /56), but that is ok, that is the way it
> is meant to be!
> 
> Utilization of IPv6 addresses is NOT MEANT to be done in the same way
> as in IPv4.  APNIC explains it quite well on:
> 
> http://www.apnic.net/policy/ipv6-address-policy/text
> "The actual usage of addresses within each assignment will be quite
> low, when compared to IPv4 assignments. In IPv6, "utilization" is only
> measured in terms of the bits to the left of the /56 boundary. In
> other words, utilization refers to the assignment of /56s to end
> sites, and not the number of addresses assigned within individual /56s
> at those end sites. Throughout this document, the term utilization
> refers to the allocation of /56s to end sites, and not the number of
> addresses assigned within individual /56s within those end sites."
> 
> Your puzzled because you haven't had the IPv6 paradigm shift happen in
> your head. Yet.
> 
> Read this blog post for more:
> http://weblog.chrisgrundemann.com/index.php/2009/how-much-ipv6-is-there/
> 
>> 
>> However, as you say
>> 
>>> ARIN isn't in a position to disclose the
>>> application information related to any allocation, regardless of the nature
>>> of the applicant
>> 
>> Which, while understandable, is a great pity. We do have an international
>> climate where the sometimes "special" relationship of internet governance
>> groups with the US government is viewed with suspicion, and this large
>> allocation without explanation will only fuel those fires.
> 
> John gave you the explanation:
> "Allocations are made based on documented need in accordance with the
> established policy.  Policy is determined by the community based on
> the Policy Development Process, which is documented at:
> <https://www.arin.net/participate/how_to_participate.html>."
> 
> Is it not the task of the IGF to put out those fires? This is capacity
> building, which is the purpose of the IGF, no?
> 
> Wouldn't an IGF main session on IPv6 sub-netting and architecture be
> more useful than human rights and a development agenda for IG if we
> really want to put out these fires?
> 
>> 
>> Thanks again for being as open with your reply as you could as ARIN CEO. But
>> of course I remain curious and I am sure others do as well.
> 
> And thanks for his follow up post, which I have just read after
> composing this mail.
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> 
> McTim
> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
> route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
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