Internic address allocation policy (fwd)

Jim Fleming JimFleming at unety.net
Thu Nov 21 03:01:36 UTC 1996


On Wednesday, November 20, 1996 3:34 PM, Snowdog[SMTP:snowdog at charm.net] wrote:
@ Hello,
@ 
@ I think that intentions of the original email is harmless and a good idea,
@ however, I also think that the suggested implementation below simply 'should'
@ not work.
@ 

My main theme was that the Internet could be a nice
self-policing sort of place. It is unfortunate that people
and companies have grabbed addresses in the 80's
and now sit on them and do not want to discuss how
they are being used.

Meanwhile, ISPs are asked to jump through hoops
and justify tiny allocations. In my opinion, people are
looking at the wrong end of the allocation food chain.

While I understand that people might subscribe to the
idea of..."counting the nickels and the dollars will take
care of themselves..." It seems useful to point out that
while this is occuring, the millions are being thrown
out with the baby, the bath water and the kitchen sink.

@ I do not know of any organization that would allow internal network information
@ to be made available to an outside party.  I think this ranks pretty
@ high up on any security policy.  It would probably not even be possible on 
@ correctly secured network.  And on one that wasn't properly secured, you 
@ would probably hear lots of complaints about scanning or searching that
@ network.  
@ 

I think that you might be jumping to conclusions as
to what would go in a report. If only information went
in the report which could be easily deduced via public
methods would people be concerned ?

Also, again I stress that the bulk of the reports
would be self-generated. What we are talking about
is a cultural shift, similar to what happened with Ecology.
We had a neighbor who 10 years ago prided herself
in telling everyone privately that she thought ecology
was useless. When our city went to "vanity cans",
she was one of the first to sign-up, because it was
now culturally "cool" to have recycling bins at the
curb.

The idea is NOT to have people snooping on their
neighbors. The idea is to have people check to see
if their neighbors "checked" in and develop a simple
report and maybe to send a reminder that the report
is due.

@ So, I think you are going to find in almost every instance, the other
@ company telling you to politely mind your own business.  Now, another
@ solution might be to have one organization (InterNIC or sorts) to be
@ responsible for obtaining and reviewing this information.  They 
@ already do this to smaller providers trying to obtain new IP addresses.
@ It might be possible to implement some sort of continued observations
@ of issued IP addresses to ensure proper allocation.  But this sounds
@ like alot more potential work for an already busy entity like the InterNIC.  
@ 

That is a lot of work, and "centralized" intelligence agencies
are not what the Internet world needs.

@ I don't know, I just thought to mention that I liked the idea, but
@ at the same time it just doesn't seem like a practical solution.  
@ 
@ Just my added thoughts...
@ 
@ Sean Rolinson
@ snowdog at charm.net
@ 

Thanks for the comments. I think that it is fair
to mention that I have found, in a limited survey,
that people who are hording addresses hate this
system and those that have nothing to hide and
are PROUD of their frugal allocations and network
management methods seem to endorse this
sort of program.

Again, the proposal is to encourage people and
companies to be proud of their Internet ecology
activities. In order to do that, people have to
get to the PR departments of companies and
show them how much GOOD publicity they will
get for cleaning up their allocations. These
clean-up efforts can be detected and recognized
by their "binary neighbors" on the neighbor net.

--
Jim Fleming
UNETY Systems, Inc.
Naperville, IL

e-mail:
JimFleming at unety.net
JimFleming at unety.net.s0.g0 (EDNS/IPv8)






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