Why does Sprint have address filters again?

Karl Denninger karl at mcs.net
Thu May 28 01:08:57 UTC 1998


On Wed, May 27, 1998 at 06:08:40PM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
> For some unknown reason, although IHETS has been allocated the entire
> traditional class B 165.138.0.0, they are announcing it as a partial
> 165.138.0.0/20.  They could announce the entire /16.  But they've chosen
> not too.  If IHETS wants to ensure they can reach as much as the Internet
> as possible, they could follow Sprint's filtering policy, and announce
> their network as a 165.138.0.0/16.  IHET could check
> http://www.sprint.net/filter.htm for a description of the policy.
> 
> Since IHETS seems to be a SPRINT customer, I sure would appreciate it
> if the SPRINT NOC could explain to IHETS why such address filters exist,
> and if Sprint thinks its a good idea to apply them to other ISPs, why
> the reciprocal argument would also be true.
> -- 
> Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
>   Affiliation given for identification not representation

It is also fascinating that Sprint's argument for their filtering (per their
web page) is that ARIN has espoused this as a "proper" thing to do.  They 
even provide a web reference to ARIN's statements in this matter.

I have to ask what in the dickens ARIN thinks it is doing advocating *policy*
on address filtering for ISPs, how this squares with ARIN's 501c(6) status,
and how this can be justified, particularly when it shows up referenced like 
this as a "business justification".

This polciy CERTAINLY has nothing to do with route table size, and wouldn't 
if it was enforced at the /19 level across the board.

So just what is Sprint's, and ARIN's, justification for those *policy*
statements?

And does anyone on NANOG have other references to ISPs who *also* have
picked up on this "suggestion" and have implemented something similar?

[This is a request as an ARIN AC member, who has tried to get a lot of 
these kinds of questions answered from officers and trustees of ARIN]

CC: arin-council at arin.net

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