1/8 and 27/8 allocated to APNIC

Nick Hilliard nick at foobar.org
Fri Jan 22 16:17:44 UTC 2010


On 22/01/2010 15:16, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Because relying on a blog post for policy really meets everybody's
> definition of rationality.... :-(

What works then?  What happened to rough consensus and running code?

> If you're assigning 2 at the same time, they should be adjacent.
> 
> The dribbles here and there policy never was particularly satisfying,
> because it assumes that this was all temporary until the widespread
> deployment of IPv6.

I don't get where you're coming from here.  I can see that there is a (very
minor) aesthetic reason to assign adjacent /8s to a RIR.  But
operationally, I really can't see any other reason.

Someone else mentioned that we are now scraping the bottom of the ipv4
barrel.  As of two days ago, there were quantifiable problems associated
with 13 out of the 26 remaining /8s.  12 of these are known to be used to
one extent or another on internet connected networks, and are seen as
source addresses on various end-points around the place.  One of them
(223/8) has rfc-3330 issues (although later fixed in 5735).

So, the issue for IANA is how to allocate these /8s in a way which is
demonstrably unbiased towards any particular RIR.  The solution which
they've agreed on with the RIRs looks unbiassed, unpredictable in advance,
calculable in retrospect and best of all, it's not open to abuse.  And
while Chuck Norris could probably predict the footsie, the djia and the
hang-seng weeks in advance, this sort of prognostication appears to be
beyond the capabilities of ICANN, IANA and the RIRs.  At least if it isn't,
no-one's saying anything.

Do you have a better suggestion about how to allocate tainted address space
in a way that is going to ensure that the organisations at the receiving
end aren't going to accuse you of bias?

Nick





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