Internic address allocation policy

Tue Nov 19 06:32:52 UTC 1996

Original message <3.0.32.19961118224915.006f2b00 at nap.net>
From: "Chris A. Icide" <chris at nap.net>
Date: Nov 18, 22:49
Subject: Re: Internic address allocation policy
> 
...
> Imagine my amazement when I met Kim in person and found out she
> didn't have fangs, horns, and a string with dried Network Engineers' ears
> 'round her neck.  In fact, she is a very nice person doing a very difficult
> job.  She has a set of rules she must live by.  she has to be impartial,
> and show no preferences.  

In fact, though, I have stories piling up via private email that shows
that this "impartial and show no preferences" is in fact ignored on a
fairly regular basis. 

Thanks to everyone who has given me stuff via private email, and keep
the stories coming in. 

The allocation policies do in fact have fatal flaws. For instance,
conservation of addresses which results in not filling an allocated block
within 3 months is penalized, not rewarded. The penalty for using up
addresses too slowly is to have future allocations blocked entirely,
not simply limited to /19.

You are better off allocating /24's quickly than carefully analyzing customer
needs and allocating smaller subnets. However, wasting addresses too quickly
can get your subnet-size policy brought into question.

But, bigger providers are given much more slack with regard to their allocation 
policies, and their own public SWIP and rwhois information bears this out. 
There are dozens of examples of /24 subnets being handed out to people
with very low numbers of actual hosts by Sprint, for instance, from their
207.40.0.0 block, and clearly they were able to receive their 208.0.0.0/12 
block in spite of this. (I hate to pick on Sprint here, but that's the
first set of data I pulled for examination).

It goes on and on. 

Yes, by bringing this out into the public I've potentially made someone(s)
at the Internic unhappy. Sorry. I've also received dozens of private emails
thanking me for making this more widely known, and several other providers
have contacted me because they're in the same situation... comply with
the policy, and get screwed.

The fact is, I *don't* ever have to post stuff like this about my other
"suppliers". For starters, I've never had a real supplier try to jerk me
around so much, and secondly, there really aren't any other suppliers who
are sole (monopolistic) sources.

If Cisco's tech support people were as hard to deal with as the Internic
representatives, I'd go buy someone else's routers. I don't have this
choice for IP addresses, and my complaints are going to be public as long
as there's people who want to hear them.

-matthew kaufman
 matthew at scruz.net