Allocation of IP Addresses

Mon Mar 18 14:09:36 UTC 1996

At 10:51 AM 3/15/96 +0900, David R. Conrad wrote:
>Gordon:
>
>>Just a small quibble David:  when you say "the IANA" decided, it gives 
>>the impression that an august group of people like the IESG took action.  
>
>I certainly would not intend to, nor do I think I did, give the
>impression that a group like the IESG took action.  One of the
>advantages (and arguable disadvantages) of the current registry system
>is a lack of bureaucratic overhead of the type you thought I was
>implying.
>
>>In reality "the IANA" is but a SINGLE person - John Postel.  
>
>Actually, it is 2 people, Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds.  However,
>note that the IANA is responsible to the IAB in the great Internet
>organzation chart in the sky.
>
>>If some 
>>people are upset I suspect it might be because the power to make such a 
>>decision is vested in the hands of ONE person rather than in a group.
>
>My impression is that people are concerned that an organization with
>no track record and no customers (at this time) was able to obtain a
>highly coveted large block of space.  Further, some people are
>concerned with the allocation of a subnet of a class A where an
>equivalently sized block in the class C space would have seemed
>appropriate.  

As I seem to recall, the @Home proposal (at least what I saw of it after the
fact) was for a potential 50 Million addresses.  This definitely puts it out
of the range of a registry decision and moved it to IANA.

Those of us that were in the middle of the IPng address size debate had
predicted a request like this and have not supprise of the outcome.

BTW, there are 'rumours' floating around that China wants a couple of A's or
so...

Robert Moskowitz
Chrysler Corporation
(810) 758-8212