6man B. E. Carpenter Internet-Draft Univ. of Auckland Intended status: Best Current Practice S. Krishnan Expires: 18 November 2024 Cisco 17 May 2024 Clarification of IPv6 Address Assignment Policy draft-carpenter-6man-addr-assign-00 Abstract This document clarifies the approval process for changes to the IPv6 Address Space registry. About This Document This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-carpenter-6man-addr-assign/. Discussion of this document takes place on the 6MAN Working Group mailing list (mailto:ipv6@ietf.org), which is archived at https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/ipv6/. Subscribe at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6/. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on 18 November 2024. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. Carpenter & Krishnan Expires 18 November 2024 [Page 1] Internet-Draft IPv6 Address Assignment Policy May 2024 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/ license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Approval Level of IPv6 Address Allocations . . . . . . . . . 3 3. RFC Editor Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Appendix A. Change Log [RFC Editor: please remove] . . . . . . . 4 A.1. Draft-00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1. Introduction Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) and its address space are currently defined by [STD86] and [RFC4291]. The management of the IPv6 address space was delegated to IANA by [RFC1881]. Occasionally, allocations are performed outside the scope of routine allocations to regional address registries. For example, recently a substantial allocation was requested by an IETF document approved by the IESG [I-D.ietf-6man-sids]. The present document clarifies the status of RFC 1881 and the approval level needed for non-routine address allocations. This clarification is necessary because RFC 1881, a joint publication of the IAB and IESG, is incorrectly listed in the RFC index at the time of writing as "legacy", whereas it remains current. Also the allocation policy in the IANA IPv6 Address Space registry [IANA] is shown as "IESG approval", whereas for major allocations a more stringent policy is appropriate. Carpenter & Krishnan Expires 18 November 2024 [Page 2] Internet-Draft IPv6 Address Assignment Policy May 2024 2. Approval Level of IPv6 Address Allocations Portions of the IPv6 address space are shown in the registry as "Reserved by IETF". This is the address space held in reserve for future use if ever the current 125-bit unicast space (2000::/3) is found inadequate or inappropriate. RFC 1881 did not specify an allocation policy for this. At some point, IANA listed "IESG approval". This is defined in [BCP26] as a rather weak requirement ("Although there is no requirement that the request be documented in an RFC, the IESG has the discretion to request documents...") and as "a fall-back mechanism in the case where one of the other allowable approval mechanisms cannot be employed...". For something as important as the majority of the spare IPv6 address space, this is clearly insufficient. The present document replaces this by the "IETF Review" process as defined by BCP 26. It is not considered necessary to require the stricter "Standards Action" policy, because there might be cases where opening up a new range of address space did not in fact require a new protocol standard. It may be noted that the recent allocation for [I-D.ietf-6man-sids], which was processed as a working group document, did indeed follow the more stringent "IETF Review" process proposed by this document. 3. RFC Editor Considerations The RFC Editor is requested to update the "Stream" information for [RFC1881] to "IAB" in place of "Legacy". 4. IANA Considerations IANA is requested to update the "Registration Procedure(s)" section of the Internet Protocol Version 6 Address Space registry to show the policy as "IETF Review". 5. Security Considerations Carefully reviewed address allocation mechanisms are necessary for any form of address-based security. 6. Acknowledgements Useful comments were received from [TBD] ... 7. References Carpenter & Krishnan Expires 18 November 2024 [Page 3] Internet-Draft IPv6 Address Assignment Policy May 2024 7.1. Normative References [BCP26] Best Current Practice 26, . At the time of writing, this BCP comprises the following: Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017, . [RFC4291] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture", RFC 4291, DOI 10.17487/RFC4291, February 2006, . [STD86] Internet Standard 86, . At the time of writing, this STD comprises the following: Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) Specification", STD 86, RFC 8200, DOI 10.17487/RFC8200, July 2017, . 7.2. Informative References [I-D.ietf-6man-sids] Krishnan, S., "SRv6 Segment Identifiers in the IPv6 Addressing Architecture", Work in Progress, Internet- Draft, draft-ietf-6man-sids-06, 15 February 2024, . [IANA] "IPv6 Address Space registry", n.d., . [RFC1881] IAB and IESG, "IPv6 Address Allocation Management", RFC 1881, DOI 10.17487/RFC1881, December 1995, . Appendix A. Change Log [RFC Editor: please remove] A.1. Draft-00 * Original version Carpenter & Krishnan Expires 18 November 2024 [Page 4] Internet-Draft IPv6 Address Assignment Policy May 2024 Authors' Addresses Brian E. Carpenter The University of Auckland School of Computer Science The University of Auckland PB 92019 Auckland 1142 New Zealand Email: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com Suresh Krishnan Cisco Email: suresh.krishnan@gmail.com Carpenter & Krishnan Expires 18 November 2024 [Page 5]