1/8 and 27/8 allocated to APNIC

Fri Jan 22 19:09:00 UTC 2010

On 22/01/2010 16:32, Brian Dickson wrote:
> So, if the tainted *portions* of problem /8's are set aside

What portion of 1/8 is untainted?  Or any other /8 that the IANA has
identified as having problems?  How do you measure it?  How do you ensure
that other /8s which don't _appear_ to have problems really don't have
problems due to invisible use?  And if you set aside say, the bits that
WIANA or some other organisation has delegated to its stakeholders, are you
implicitly acknowledging that they are a legitimate ICANN accredited RIR?
Or if some large corporation starts reselling CPE gear which uses
IANA-unallocated space on one of their popular devices, does their prior
use get them some form of "rights" over that address space?

IANA only guarantees that no other RIR has been allocated these /8s
according to its registry, and it does not guarantee routability or
reachability on the public internet (however much the individuals within
IANA / ICANN care about this).  If some other organisation has decided to
use address space which overlaps with IANA's public registry, then they've
created a serious problem for themselves and their customers / stakeholders
which could have been avoided in the first place.  IPv4 address space is
handed out on the basis of need, and there was really no reason for these
organisations to squat unallocated space in the first place.

IANA hands out /8s.  We know that some of these are going to cause serious
problems, but life sucks and we just have to deal with what happens.

Personally, I feel very sorry for APNIC that they've been allocated 1/8,
but that's just the way the cookie crumbles.  The RIRs agreed a process
with IANA and knew what the consequences of that process were.  They also
appear to have agreed that it was better to use 1/8 than not use it.

Their end-users are going to be incensed at the level of problems which
this is going to cause.  I can only hope that there won't be
inter-governmental bun-fights over it.

Nick