Release An Allocated /48

[dclough]

I recently allocated a horribly unnecessary /48 to one of my tunnels to try some custom tunneling between routers that I own.  It didn't work out as I had planned and now I'm left with a /48 that I have absolutely no use for on the tunnel in question.

Is there a way to release the /48 back into the wild?  I already have my network and RDNS set up with my routed /64 so the /48 is useless to me.

In the spirit of learning from our mistakes, I want HE.net to add a button that de-allocates a /48 subnet on command.  I know IPv6 is designed with scalability in mind and that there are probably more IPv6 addresses out there than there are H20 molecules in the ocean (Okay, not really), but regardless of how flexible the addressing scheme for IPv6 is, we should still take a little hint from IPv4 and give back unused netblocks, so our children's children's children's children's children's children's future descendants don't have to build a new addressing scheme from scratch like we did.  ;)

All those IPv6-enabled household appliances will thank us many hundreds of years down the road.

[broquea]

Email ipv6@he.net with the request to de-allocate, and your information.

[NewtonNet]

give back unused netblocks, so our children's children's children's children's children's children's future descendants don't have to build a new addressing scheme from scratch like we did.  ;)

All those IPv6-enabled household appliances will thank us many hundreds of years down the road.

Fogive me picking up on what was clearly meant as tongue-in-cheek, but it does touch on a point worth making. IPv6 was not designed, and indeed could not be designed, to last forever - indeed it is hard to imagine that it will be the 'Internet protocol of choice' in even 50 years time. Technology, and our use and requirements of it, change so rapidly that we cannot design for anything so far in the future...

So you need not worry about your 6th-generation decendents as we (or rather they!) will undoubtedly have gone through several iterations of the 'Internet protocol' (or 'Googlenet protocol' as it may well be called then! ;)). Indeed, they may well be wondering how we ever coped in our 'quaint' 128-bit address space!

Of course, that's not to say we should view the address space as infinitely sized either...

Mathew