RIRs give out unique addresses (Was: something has a /8! ...)

Thu Sep 20 14:56:17 UTC 2012

I suppose that ARIN would say that they do not guarantee routability
because they do not have operational control of Internet routers.
However, Wouldn't you say that there is a very real expectation that
when you request address space through ARIN or RIPE that it would be
routable?  I would think that what ARIN and RIPE are really saying is
that they issue unique addresses and you need to get your service
provider to route them. FWIW, the discussion of the military having
addresses pulled back is pretty much a non-starter unless they want to
give them back.  When the management of IP address space was moved from
the US DoD, there were memorandums of understanding that the military
controlled their assigned address space and nothing would change that.
I know this for a fact because I was around this discussion in the US
Air Force.

Steven Naslund

-----Original Message-----
From: John Curran [mailto:jcurran at arin.net] 
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 9:40 AM
To: Jeroen Massar
Cc: NANOG list
Subject: Re: RIRs give out unique addresses (Was: something has a /8!
...)

On Sep 20, 2012, at 10:10 AM, Jeroen Massar <jeroen at unfix.org>
wrote:
> On 2012-09-20 16:01 , John Curran wrote:
>> 
>> It's very clear in the ARIN region as well.  From the ARIN Number 
>> Resource Policy Manual (NRPM), 
>> <https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four11> -
>> 
>> "4.1. General Principles 4.1.1. Routability Provider independent
>> (portable) addresses issued directly from ARIN or other Regional 
>> Registries are not guaranteed to be globally routable."
> 
> While close, that is not the same.
> 
> The RIPE variant solely guarantees uniqueness of the addresses.
> 
> The ARIN variant states "we don't guarantee that you can route it 
> everywhere", which is on top of the uniqueness portion.

Agreed - I called it out because ARIN, like RIPE, does not assert that
the address blocks issued are "publicly routable address space" 
(i.e. which was Tim Franklin's original statement, but he did not have
on hand the comparable ARIN reference for that point.)

FYI,
/John