Clarification of IPv6 Address Assignment Policy

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 24 November 2024.¶

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶

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

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], some years before the current relationship between the IETF and IANA was formalized [RFC2860] and registry details were clarified [RFC7020], [RFC7249].¶

Occasionally, IPv6 address space 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.¶

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.¶

This change requires an extension to section 2.3 of [RFC7249]. The phrase ', through "IETF Review" as defined in [BCP26]' is added to the end of the first paragraph.¶

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] ...¶

Appendix A. IPv6 Registry Title Inconsistencies

The authors would like to draw attention to inconsistencies in the titles for two of the IPv6 Address Registries: the "Internet Protocol Version 6 Address Space" registry and the "IPv6 Global Unicast Address Assignments" registry. These two titles are inconsistent with the titles for the "IANA IPv6 Special-Purpose Address Registry" and the similar IPv4 registries, the "IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry" and the "IANA IPv4 Special-Purpose Address Registry."¶

While these are mostly editorial issues, likely within IANA's control, confusion caused by these different titles could have easily contributed to not updating the Registry Procedures for the "Internet Protocol Version 6 Address Space" registry at the time of RFC 7249.¶

The "IANA IPv6 Address Space Registry" and the "IANA IPv6 Global Unicast Address Space Registry" are possibly more consistent titles for these registries.¶

Appendix B. Change Log [RFC Editor: please remove]

Authors' Addresses