Independent space from ARIN

Mon Apr 14 14:37:49 UTC 2003

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Jeff McAdams wrote:

> OK...then why hasn't *any* of the relevant documentation (which is
> wrong, no matter which policy you're dealing with) changed?

Based on recent activity with www.arin.net, I think they're more concerned 
with the look & feel of their web site than the actual content.  I'd say 
fire the graphic design person/people and use that money to simply keep 
the site up to date and functional or to pay more IP analysts.

> ARIN's policies (at least as stated on their web pages...but we've
> already shown those to be fictional) indicate that the renumbering would
> have to happen before an additional block would be allocated, and that

There does seem to be either a lack of consistency or some conflicting 
policies depending on how many allocations you've gotten.  You might get 
used to one policy and then find it no longer applies to you.

> they only allocate blocks based on anticipated 3 month growth (which is
> also fictional...they actually base it on *past* growth, not anticipated
> future growth, based on what I was told after the last allocation,
> again...may be the truth, may not be, flip a coin)

I've run into this too...having ARIN point fingers at past growth and 
simultaneously quoting rfc2050 saying to only request 3 months worth.  
IMO, that policy sucks, which is why I suggested someone write an update 
for rfc2050.  Actually, once you get used to dealing with ARIN, filling 
out the forms the way they want, and have your IP allocation data in a 
format that lends itself to easily filling in the blanks on the request 
form, getting more space isn't that big a deal, but it still is a pain to 
do, requires updating filters, router configs, routing registries, etc. 
and doing it several times a year just seems like a waste of time.  Once a 
year would be more acceptable.

> Suffice it to say, that would not have been practical in our case.

If that's the sort of detail you gave ARIN, it's no surprise you've not 
gotten what you want from them.

> allocation...we just, again, wanted to renumber out of the PA (what does
> the "A" stand for, there, by the way?) space, with a /20+.  And, no, I'm

PI = provider indepentent (you can take it with you if you change providers)
PA = provider assigned (switch providers and you lose the space)
or were you being rhetorical for some reason?

> not going to renumber half my network then go back to ARIN again.
> That's absurd to have to do that.

Based on rfc2050 (if the IP analyst you get decides to invoke it), you're
going to have to renumber in 3 months if you want all that renumbering to
be into a single block.  Like it or not, those appear to be the rules.

> given the allocations (both PA and PI) that we have, and we're desiring
> (for business reasons as well as altruistic) to renumber out of PA space
> into fewer, but larger, PI blocks.  ARIN has been a stumbling block to
> us accomplishing these things every step of the way.

Other than doing your part to slow routing table growth (and the obvious
desire to get as much space as possible, as infrequently as possible from
ARIN), why do you care how many IP blocks (and what sizes) you have?  For
traffic engineering purposes, there are actually advantages to more
smaller blocks.

> ARIN has failed to accomplish everything that it was created to do.  Its
> whole purpose for existence has basically not been served.

It makes a big profit though :)  Have you seen their financial reports?

> Well...as someone else mentioned...apparently you can never fill out an
> ARIN form without ever being asked for clarification on a different
> form.  Why don't they just have you fill out the second form in the
> first place?

Practice.  My first few times, I had to clarify things, and they'd
typically not ask for all clarifications at once, so you clarify
something, then they ask for clarification on something else.  This last
time, I think they only asked once for clarifications on a couple of
larger allocations, one of which was actually fully mentioned in the
initial application, but they didn't put the info in 2 different parts of
the application together.  If you fill out the form properly and just
assume that they'll want clarification on any /24 or larger assignment to
a customer, you probably won't spend much time going back and forth on
clarifications.  If you have ISP customers, allocate (not assign) space to
them so they can do their own swips, and tell them they have to do it.

> And some people wonder why most of the world dreads dealing with ARIN.

Most of the world doesn't have to...just North America.

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 Jon Lewis *jlewis at lewis.org*|  I route
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