[49276] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: ARIN IP allocation questionn
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Schwartz)
Thu Jun 27 14:57:53 2002
From: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>
To: <lucifer@lightbearer.com>
Cc: <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 11:57:18 -0700
In-Reply-To: <20020627111850.A17301@lightbearer.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Thu, 27 Jun 2002 11:18:50 -0600, Joel Baker wrote:
>On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 01:56:26AM -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
>>>My *personal* opinion is that wise ISPs only punt customers to=
ARIN once
>>>they reach the point where they can, in fact, have a normal=
ARIN netblock
>>>assigned directly to them (currently a /20, unless I slept=
through another
>>>change...)
>>The guidelines have a strong preference for singly-homed=
networks to
>>use IP address space allocated to them from their upstreams. I=
can think
>>of no logical reason* an ISP would prefer their customers to go=
to ARIN
>>rather than deal with them. The global routing table is better=
off for it
>>as well, as the customer's /20 would be a new route, rather=
than being
>>included in their provider's presumably larger block.
>The assumption that the ISP has a larger block is not always a=
wise one
>to make.
=09Worst case, the ISP can take the customer's request to ARIN and=
request one
twice as large. The ISP can even give the customer most of what's=
left of its
current allocation and then request another one larger than the=
one it
currently holds.
>>On the other hand, I can think of many reasons a customer would=
prefer
>>to deal with ARIN than their upstream, assuming the meager cost=
wasn't a
>>factor and they don't mind polluting the global table a tad. Of=
course,
>>that's not really an operational issue.
>Most of the places I've worked would be charging them for the IP=
usage
>either way, since the ISP has to pay ARIN, eventually...
=09Yes, but the ISP pays at most what their customer would, usually=
less.
>>* The only reason I could possibly think of is if the ISP is=
afraid that
>>the large allocation will impact their future allocations=
because they
>>don't have the confidence or competence to extract a proper=
justification
>>from their customer and present/defend that justification to=
ARIN when
>>their next allocation comes up. But this wasn't the reason you=
were
>>thinking of, right?
>See above. Sometimes you have lots of IP space, but nothing=
*large*, due to
>business constraints.
=09Why does this matter? The customer shouldn't particularly care=
how he gets
his block. One time when I requested a /22 from my provider, I=
got two /23's.
So what?
>This often changes over time, but some of us don't
>have multiple legacy /16s from Back In The Day (and then again,=
some of us
>do - but not the 'us' I work for, anymore).
=09Well, if you want more IP space, you won't get it by referring=
your
customer's to ARIN. And the policy that singly-homed customers=
should
strongly prefer to get IP space from their providers stands.
=09DS
