[1530] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Policy Statement on Address Space Allocations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dennis Ferguson)
Thu Jan 25 20:30:01 1996
To: George Herbert <gherbert@crl.com>
Cc: miguel.sanz@rediris.es (Miguel A. Sanz. RedIRIS/CSIC), nanog@merit.edu,
cidrd@iepg.org, iab@isi.edu, iesg@isi.edu, iana@isi.edu,
local-ir@ripe.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 25 Jan 1996 15:21:25 PST."
<199601252321.AA08552@mail.crl.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 17:16:00 -0800
From: Dennis Ferguson <dennis@Ipsilon.COM>
> We are now closer to running out of Router capability than IP numbers
> to hand out. A rational solution to that would be to allocate IP
> space in a manner such that we don't run out of Router capability
> before we run out of IP space, by assigning easier-to-route,
> larger CIDR blocks to large providers, and allowing growth space
> in allocations so that small allocations can grow without having
> to add more announcements. If the allocating agencies continue to
> insist on being as sparing as possible with block allocations, which
> is noticably increasing routing problems, then we are going to face
> Internet partitions sooner rather than later, based on router load
> rather than running out of IP space. This is, in my opinion, a poor
> choice for overall growth.
But note well that current routers can't last forever (if you want them
to we might as well give the next 120 requestors a class A chunk and then
forget about address allocation altogether), and if you're looking for
short-term relief address allocation policy is not the place to get it.
Because the current forwarding table size is a result of the integral of
all past allocation policies, it takes a while (a year or two, certainly,
a lifetime in this industry) for any current address allocation changes
to have any measureable effect.
If you really need it, a much more effective method to get short term relief
is to squeeze some of the "history" out of the forwarding table. The 192.*
block, and some of the high 190's, look like swamps that are ripe for the
picking.
Dennis Ferguson
