standards for giving out blocks of IP addresses

Sat Jun 16 19:04:49 UTC 2001

Let me respond to Chuck with an example, just for clarity's sake:

EXXON, the gas folks, come to you and request a /20.

They are using this /20 internally (say, to assign IP addresses
to individual gas pumps across the US).

They demonstrate to you that they are going to number 1,024 pumps upon the
receipt of this /20.

They demonstrate to you that they plan to number 2,048 pumps total over
the next 12 months.

A few months go by, and EXXON comes to you and says that they have number
3,400 pumps, and are now over 80% utilized on the initial /20 you assigned
them.

You can now assign them additional address space. 

You are not really justified to assign more address space to them until
they have assigned 80% of their /20. (There are real-world examples where
orgs need to request additional address space at the same time as
achieving 80%, but let's not let reality get in the way of textbook
examples!)

The size of the additional block you assign them should closely fit the
25%-50% requirement. (Again, real world examples tend to trend to fitting
the 50% requirement more than the 25% requirement, but so be it.)

/david