whois kludge.. (fwd)

Mon Nov 29 16:28:11 UTC 1993

Elise:

>Bill's question, "Are each of the regionals who get a CIDR block
>encouraged to either report back assignments..." is one that is
>raised every so often.  Yes, regionals who get CIDR blocks
>are encouraged/expected to report reassignments of the block
>to the InterNic.  This is one of the fundamental tenants of the
>distributed allocation procedure.
>
>Is there some confusion about registering reassignments of allocations
>with the InterNic?

This just ain't good enough. For years already we have problems with
stale network numbers (or silent or whatever you call them), for
example. There is and has not been any incentive to communicate with
"the NIC" once you have a network number. This will be much worsened
with CIDR allocations unless there is a clearly defined process in
place. I believe a good way to do this is to reverify network number
information annually. Could be spread all over the year, so not tens of
thousands of network numbers have to be processed within a few days.
People need to act like network numbers are a common good, and not
hogable personal property. People should loose network numbers, unless
they participate in the process. CIDR is a funny thing here, as on the
one hand it makes matters worse due to the assignment of blocks, while
on the other hand and from a certain point of view it makes things
less severe, as certain things matter less if there is a hierarchical
addressing structure in place.

Hans-Werner