Rogers Canada using 7.0.0.0/8 for internal address space

Mon May 23 16:32:09 UTC 2011

On May 23, 2011, at 8:28 AM, Mark Farina wrote:
> Is the DoD releasing this range to Rogers?

Unlikely, although it might be an interesting case of testing ARIN's transfer policy if it was the case :-).

> Or has Rogers squatted on this space due to exhaustion of their 10/8 use?

Probably. I've heard other large providers having similar issues (resulting in several attempts to designate more RFC 1918, all of which were all shot down).

> We've seen other vendors and ISP squat on previously unused ranges (the 1/8 or 5/8s).

Yes, however at the time those ISPs squatted on those addresses (and others), they had not yet been allocated by IANA pretty much guaranteeing there would be collisions when the IPv4 free pool was exhausted.  In this case, the block has been allocated yet doesn't appear to be in the routing system and I'm not sure it ever has been (at least authorized to be).  I'm guessing Rogers is making the assumption that the chances are probably small that one of their customers will need to communicate with a non-announced US DoD network.  I suspect they aren't the first to make this assumption.

> Could they not wrap their internal cable modem to node chatter in IPv6, instead of using assigned address space?

This would assume their deployed systems can support IPv6.  I suspect they have a few non-upgradeable systems/devices in their network and have chosen to squat on 7/8 rather than raise their rates to cover short-term upgrade costs (or deal with additional operational costs if they used multiple instances of 10/8).  But I'm just guessing...

Regards,
-drc