[OCCAID] IPv6 TLA Renumbering Project: News & Update :)

[James]

Hello,

OCCAID has been successful in its IPv6 development with assistance from our
members and sponsors, as well as the 6BONE project (http://www.6bone.net).

As many of you are aware, OCCAID is running its services based out of 3ffe
6BONE ipv6 addressing space. As required by the RFC3701, 6BONE must be
phased out and all 3ffe addressing space must be shutdown and returned by
2006 June 6th.

One of the items on the OCCAID's 2005 agenda is to obtain a RIR (2001:) 
production IPv6 space and start migrating users off of the 3ffe space. The
plan is to eventually cease advertisement of 3ffe:401d::/32 prefix as early
as by end of this year. 

However, because OCCAID is a completely non-funded non-profit project, thus
far all of its operating expense was placed as burden on our sponsors and
TowardEX to run the network. We have repetitively reviewed options of
charging our users for membership status (i.e. yearly fee of $100 per 
individual, etc) to recover for the cost of network operations related to
OCCAID project -- but we decided against it in the past; as we felt that it is
premature for a non-wellknown project to start charging for membership, and
plus myself and others operating the project are currently too busy to deal
with incorporating OCCAID as a 501c3 non-profit corporation; although 
incorporating OCCAID is one of our items in this year's agenda, hopefully.

Anyways, we are happy to announce that ARIN has approved for allocation of a
production IPv6 TLA for OCCAID. However, in order for this prefix to be
allocated, an administrative charge of $500 USD must be paid. While $500 is
not a big amount, we feel that there is no need for us to pay this whole
amount out of our own, when OCCAID itself doesn't even generate any revenue
to cover for its own expenses at this time -- especially when this address
space is exclusively being used by occaid, not by any one of us in personal
nor in for-profit manner.

So, we ask the OCCAID members who currently possess a /48 out of 
3ffe:401d::/32 allocation to contribute anywhere between $20 to $100 US.
Once $500 is reached, we'll send that out to ARIN and get the production
addressing space for OCCAID. We are not requiring members to pay for this,
but we are asking you to help, just as we did for you.

To submit contributions, please email me off-list for payment details.

Thanks,
-J

-- 
James Jun                                            TowardEX Technologies, Inc.
Technical Lead                      Boston IPv4/IPv6 Web Hosting, Colocation and
james at towardex.com            Network design/consulting & configuration services
cell: 1(978)-394-2867           web: http://www.towardex.com , noc: www.twdx.net