69/8...this sucks

Sat Mar 8 04:15:31 UTC 2003

>
> Atlantic.Net has just joined the 69/8 club of ARIN members with
> assignments in this IP block that's apparently in numerous outdated bogon
> filters.  As I posted I'd do earlier if given space from this block, I've
> written some code to check reachability to a large number of remote IPs
> from 2 source IPs...one in one of our older ARIN blocks, one in the new 69
> block.
>
Welcome. I'm glad to see you on board. Perhaps some of these issues will get
resolved for us smaller /18 assignments.

>
> What have others in this situation done?
>
> Are you actually assigning 69/8 IP's to unsuspecting customers and hoping
> they won't notice parts of the internet ignoring them?
>
Oh, the customers notice them, and each report is handled as brought to our
attention. It's a large net, so we haven't bothered with probing at this
junction. I get about 1-3 reports a month from my customers that are due to
filters. A few of the lists themselves are out of date, evidenced by
networks that were previously working suddenly breaking by applying a new
BOGON list. Most cases are smaller networks that are often unaware that they
run such filtering. Some don't even know what it is.

I didn't have a choice on giving the space to customers. My old IP addresses
were being recalled and I get what ARIN gives me. In another month 60%+ of
my network will be within the 69/8 and I'll have to request more space which
will most likely be from the same block (the last I checked, my /18 could
expand to a /17). As far as I'm concerned, the quicker the space is assigned
and utilized, the more people we'll have spotting and contacting networks
that have bad filters.

>
> I don't know if ARIN has other "less tainted" IP space to give out, but
> something ought to be said/asked about this at the next meeting.  I
> realize ARIN can't guarantee global routability of IP space, but should
> they continue to give out IP blocks they absolutely know are not fully
> routable on the internet today?
>

In defense of ARIN, the ice on a net block has to be broken at some point.
They could wait 3 years and notify every list every hour of every day for
those 3 years and there would still be many networks filtering those
networks. The only way to catch it is to notice the block and make contact
with the network. In many cases, personal contact is necessary as emails are
often misunderstood or ignored.

Jack Bates
BrightNet Oklahoma