Summary

  • Md. Rafeeun Noby Babir and Muhammad Redwanul Karim's 2024 prop-160 proposed a /44 IPv6 assignment for an IPv4-assignment holder with multihomed infrastructure and a /44 minimum for portable multihoming assignments, in place of /48.
  • After a withdrawn first draft and an unsuccessful second draft at APNIC 58, the proposal was abandoned at APNIC 59 on 26 February 2025. APNIC's current multihoming policy still says /48.

Four bits sound like the sort of thing a network engineer finds under a keyboard. In IPv6 prefix arithmetic, moving from /48 to /44 multiplies the block by sixteen. Md. Rafeeun Noby Babir and Muhammad Redwanul Karim's second prop-160 draft wanted those four bits at the start of a portable assignment for a multihomed network. Their target was an address plan divided cleanly across sites and providers, with room for the next location.

The existing APNIC rule gives an applicant that is or plans to be multihomed a portable IPv6 assignment; its minimum is /48. That prefix contains 65,536 /64 subnets. Their concern was a network with several sites needing predictable, generous boundaries for each site and upstream relationship. The proposal argued that a /48 can make that hierarchy awkward for organisations new to IPv6. A /44 would let a designer carve the space into sixteen /48-sized pieces before drawing the finer map.

The authors rewrote two points, not one. Under section 8.2.1, an account holder with an IPv4 assignment and multihomed infrastructure would qualify for /44 IPv6. Under section 9.1.1, /44 would become the minimum portable assignment for a multihoming applicant. That pairing matters: the first clause connects an existing IPv4 holder to the IPv6 doorway; the second changes the doorway itself. The draft said the larger assignment would not add a fee under the APNIC schedule.

The route to that wording had a false start. APNIC's impact assessment addressed version 1, which mixed “assignment” and “allocation” and set different treatment for /24 and /23 IPv4 holders. The Secretariat pointed out that a /23 IPv4 allocation holder already qualified for a /32 IPv6 allocation. Babir and Karim withdrew the first text on 31 August 2024 and posted version 2 the next day. The assessment is a record of the first draft's problem; version 2 is the text on which their final /44 argument stands.

The revised proposal did not win the room. APNIC's official history records no consensus at APNIC 58 on 6 September 2024, followed by abandonment at APNIC 59 on 26 February 2025. The current policy still lists /48 as the multihoming minimum. APNIC Academy identifies Babir as a community trainer and specialist in network operations. His failed proposal captures a familiar engineering annoyance: a default can supply abundant addresses while still being an awkward starting shape for the operator who must organise them.