Summary

  • Change the ISP, then change addresses across a large static network—or pay for a second connection first. David Woodgate exposed the expensive choice inside APNIC’s portable IPv6 rule.
  • His prop-101 failed to reach consensus in March 2012. A revised proposal passed APNIC's policy and member meetings in August; the Executive Council endorsed it in November and APNIC announced implementation in February 2013.
  • The replacement test examined the organisation's technical need, including the cost of renumbering, while retaining a minimum /48, an initial one-prefix limit and measures to watch routing-table growth.

The second-ISP ticket

A network can stay with one provider for years. Then the contract changes, and the addresses embedded across its machines belong to the provider it wants to leave. Renumbering becomes the price of escape. David Woodgate found another bill tucked into APNIC's old rule: to get addresses that could move with the organisation, the applicant had to be multihomed already or promise to be within three months. The policy checked the number of upstream connections; the operational pain was the number of things that would need new addresses.

In the final text of prop-101, Woodgate described large or complicated networks for which wholesale renumbering could be impractical. He offered possible interference with critical medical or civic services as an example of why a provider's addresses might be unsuitable. That was an eligibility example, not a reported outage. The proposal's point was sharper: a second ISP is a poor proxy for whether an organisation can afford to rebuild its address plan.

Woodgate made the cost plain while speaking remotely at APNIC 34. A single-provider organisation, he explained, could either accept the provider's IPv6 addresses and risk a painful future move, or pay for extra connectivity merely to qualify for a portable assignment. The second connection did not solve the numbering problem. It bought permission to apply for the thing that did. He also warned that the friction could slow IPv6 use where static addressing made a move expensive.

A failed round, then a narrower bargain

The first meeting did not hand Woodgate the policy. APNIC's proposal history records no consensus at APNIC 33 on 1 March 2012. He submitted a fourth version on 6 March. At APNIC 34 in August, the discussion turned to how an applicant would explain the need. Participants wanted examples that would help the people applying and reviewing, without converting those examples into another rigid checklist. Woodgate agreed the guidance should illuminate the rule rather than silently narrow it.

The final proposal removed the absolute multihoming requirement. Prior APNIC portable IPv4 holders had an eligibility route; other applicants needed a reasonable technical case showing why ISP-assigned IPv6 was unsuitable, plus a plan for using the requested block. The minimum was a /48. It proposed one initial prefix per organisation and sparse placement to make later growth more likely to extend an existing prefix than create another route. APNIC would publish counts so the community could watch the routing-table side of the bargain.

Portability gained a route through the application process; the global routing system still had a seat at the table.

The room reached consensus on 30 August and the member meeting did so the next day. In the transcript, Woodgate asked if the proposal had been accepted a moment before the chairs formally put consensus to the room. The small procedural beat captures how policy works: a persuasive technical case still has to survive a public decision. APNIC's Executive Council endorsed prop-101 in November; an implementation announcement followed on 18 February 2013.

Woodgate replaced a simple but blunt badge with a more useful question. An organisation can have only one provider today and still need an address plan that will survive changing that provider tomorrow. The registry had to judge that need and watch the routes it added. Counting cables had been simpler; it had also sent the bill to the wrong place.

Original record