Allocation of IP Addresses

Thu Mar 14 00:37:59 UTC 1996

On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, Jim Browning wrote:

> I may be opening a can of worms, and if so, I believe it is one which needs 
> to be opened.  If this topic has been beaten to death in the past, then I 
> apologize, however as it is a rapidly evolving topic, it warrants repeated 
> discussion and evaluation.  My fundamental questions are:
> 
> 1.	Is InterNIC consistently applying objective criteria in its evaluation 
> of requests for the allocation of IP address blocks?
> 2.	If so, what are the criteria?
> 
> The INTERNIC IP ALLOCATION GUIDELINES FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS states 
> that "allocation is based on the ISP's 3 - 6 month requirement and other 
> information the InterNIC deems necessary".  There is no detail provided (in 
> any document I have found) of what other information InterNIC deems to be 
> necessary.
> 
> I find an apparent conflict between established policy and its actual 
> implementation on a day-to-day basis.  CIDR dictates that addresses should 
> be aggregated into the largest blocks possible, and that the publishing of 
> extraneous routes be eliminated.  In keeping with this, and because of 
> often discussed operational considerations, the minimum size of blocks 
> routed at the NAPs is growing larger and larger.  To ease participation at 
> the national level, you must ensure to the fullest extent possible that 
> your address space is routable as a single block.  In order to accomplish 
> this, you must obtain either:

This is because the internic is not the one saying /18 or smaller, NSP 
are doing that. Why should the internic get involved?

> A.	a single allocation capable of supporting planned growth, or
> B.	incremental allocations of *contiguous* blocks
> 
> InterNIC's current CIDR allocation practice does not support either of 
> these options.  Due to the shortage of *available* IP addresses (there are 
> of course millions of allocated but unused addresses floating around), 
> InterNIC is using a "slow start" approach which provides incremental 
> increases in total address space, with no guarantee that future increments 
> will be contiguous.  This means that the only way to maintain efficient 
> routing is to engage in repeated renumbering of customer addresses to 
> consolidate into increasingly larger blocks.

Yes, well there is no other way of doing it. The days of starting a ISP 
out of your house and in a few years be a Sprint is falling away. ISP's 
will just need to get space from there upstream provider and renumber.

> How many times is it reasonable to ask a customer to renumber?  Once is 
> certainly reasonable.  Twice is questionable.  More than that and I would 
> suspect the customer would renumber all right, but as part of shifting to a 
> different ISP.

As many as it takes, This is just something you are going to need to deal 
with. We started with small blocks and had to renumber several times so 
far. It is just part of growing, until you are a large NSP connected to 
all the NAPs you will just need to start will small blocks and renumber 
over and over until you get /18 or smaller.

> The day to day implementation of policy by the InterNIC has increasingly 
> critical impact on our industry, to the point of controlling who has the 
> opportunity to succeed and who does not.  IMHO, it is imperative that:
> 
> 1.	this function be performed in an understandable manner,
> 2.	objective criteria be consistently applied
> 3.	the criteria in use be publicly available, and
> 4.	there be defined mechanisms for the 'appeal' of decisions made in the 
> processing of allocation requests.
> 
> Recent experience and observation leads me to conclude that these 
> imperatives are perhaps not being met.  Am I all wet????

This is not something that the internic need to be involved with, one day 
a NSP is filtering a /19 and larger the next something different. It is 
not the InterNIC job to get involved with that. ISPs should just get 
space from there upstream provider.

Nathan Stratton		  CEO, NetRail, Inc.    Your Gateway to the World!
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