Operational Issues with 69.0.0.0/8...

Michael.Dillon at radianz.com Michael.Dillon at radianz.com
Mon Dec 9 15:43:21 UTC 2002


> That is a good point, but you are talking about a periodic notification 
> when new blocks are allocated.  Michael is talking about an automated 
feed 
> of all unallocated blocks.

I'm talking first of all, about a directory listing all the unallocated 
space that people can query. Secondly, I'm suggesting that this same set 
of data could be published by ARIN using BGP to make it easier for people 
to monitor changes. 

> If we were to invert this and say that ARIN 
> will provide a list of all blocks that are allocated to it, then that 
might 
> be worth doing.

I specifically suggested that ARIN provide a list of unallocated blocks 
because otherwise everyone else has to suck down the entire database of 
allocated blocks and invert it themselves. If they screw up their 
inversion algorithm that creates further problems.

In an ideal world, IANA would provide a top-level LDAP directory of the 
entire IPv4 address space with referrals for each large allocation to the 
RIR LDAP servers just like the DNS delegates a domain to other DNS 
servers. But it is just as workable for the 4 RIRs to work out some other 
way of synchronizing the top level of the IPv4 address space and for all 4 
of them to publish the entire data set in their local (topologically 
speaking) servers.

> However, I get back to my original question.  For people who insist on 
> filtering unallocated address space, is it too much to ask that they 
either 
> subscribe to NANOG, or potentially subscribe to an RIR-specific 
> announce-only mailing list for such things? 

Yes. This is the 21st century. Mailing lists are a 19th century technology 
(memorandums) dressed up with a bit of 20th century technology. We can do 
better. If we can create routing protocols that dynamically distribute 
routing topology data, then we can surely come up with an automated way of 
distributing the IPv4 allocation data. People who are scared of automation 
can insert the human being inside their own domains of control. But let's 
use some network protocols for the core distribution of the data.

> It seems really silly to me 
> for the registries to spew a mailing to their entire contact database 
just 
> to reach a handful of people who actually do route filtering.

Yes, spewing out email to solve a simple database synchronization problem 
seems counter-productive to me.
Even a plain ASCII text file mirrored with rsync polling would be a vast 
improvement over email. But LDAP is proving to be the direction that the 
world is moving in for this type of directory service so why not leverage 
the tools and expertise that are available out there?

-- Michael Dillon




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