NANOG/IEPG/ISOC's current role

Thu Apr 4 08:38:17 UTC 1996

On Wed, 3 Apr 1996, Paul A Vixie wrote:

> sooner or later we will have to kill off the /24's, which make up 70% of
> the routing table but offer way less than 10% of the total reachable
> destinations.  perhaps now that address ownership has been put to bed,
> the gang of big providers can agree on a date after which they will all
> stop listening to or exporting any prefixes longer than /23?  THAT would
> be the incentive the industry needs to look at private addressing and
> aggressive renumbering.  who's willing to risk collusion lawsuits and
> lost customers?  step right up and sign the register please.

I would recommend that the PIER group work with providers on this; PIER 
would be a great organization to take the huge ACTIVE table of /24's and 
mail the listed contacts for the network to offer tools, easier renumbering 
methods, etc., to minimize impact to the network's customers.  Once 
all the mails are sent out and a semi-generous grace period is set, PIER 
should recommend a date providers should stop listening to /24 announcements.

Granted, ISP's wouldn't have to follow this recommendation and could cut 
off such announcements at any given time; they follow the risk of more 
impact to their customers as Paul mentions above.

I would ALSO recommend to ISP's who wish to implement this that they not 
be hypocritical.  We've heard the ISP stories where particular ISPs want 
to filter out routes for larger prefixes, but are GLAD to advertise a /23 
if it gains that particular ISP money.

/cah