Aptum refuses to SWIP

Fri May 5 15:39:52 UTC 2023

The SWIP stuff I cleaned up included stuff from the pre-2000 period when
the internet was a kinder, gentler place.     NAT also wasn't a thing so if
a company had 1000 PCs you allocated them multiple /24s.   So SWIP was a
thing.    And yes,  it was how you justified more space.

Once NAT happened and we switched to mostly handing customers /32s and
started recovering larger allocations, the SWIP also stopped and the bitrot
started to set in.  About that time I became less involved due to being
pulled other directions so no one was maintaining the SWIP.    When someone
started whining about whois data being outdated probably 5+ years ago I
just went in and removed the swips.

An interesting datapoint is that last I checked our original pair of /24s
that were provided to us by our original tier 1 provider in 1994 is still
listing us in the whois data even though we haven't used that carrier or
the address space for 20+ years now.

On Fri, May 5, 2023, 6:48 AM richey goldberg <richey.goldberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The only real reason I can think that you would want space SWIPed to you
> is if you are trying to get an allocation of your own and trying to prove
> you have existing space to renumber out of.
>
> In 25 years of working for ISPs I don’t think I’ve ever worked for one
> that SWIPed IP space of any size to an end user and I don’t think I’ve ever
> seen a request.  Mostly because no one wants to put a list of customers out
> in the public domain.
>
>
>
> In the early 2000s I worked for a local provider who had a competing Muni
> who was using whois and rDNS to target all of the local provider’s
> customers.   I overheard two of their sales guys while eating at a local
> restaurant telling each other how they could use that info for leads and
> which tech was helping them get it.     I went back to the office that
> afternoon and sanitized our rDNS to put a stop to that.
>
>
>
> -richey
>
>
>
> *From: *NANOG <nanog-bounces+richey.goldberg=gmail.com at nanog.org> on
> behalf of Forrest Christian (List Account) <lists at packetflux.com>
> *Date: *Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 10:09 PM
> *To: *Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) <lyndon at orthanc.ca>
> *Cc: *nanog list <nanog at nanog.org>
> *Subject: *Re: Aptum refuses to SWIP
>
> I can't speak for aptum, but I'm curious as to why this is important to
> you?   I'm not trying to discount this at all,  just curious why this
> matters in the internet of 2023.
>
>
>
> I went through a couple years back and removed all of our mostly outdated
> SWIP data and replaced it with generic information.  But I run an eyeballs
> network and I don't remember the last time we allocated something shorter
> than a /28 to a customer.
>
>
>
> I can think of a couple reasons it might be good for the swip to still
> reflect the actual customer.   But most of the ones I can think of don't
> apply as much anymore.   About the only things I can think about which may
> matter has to do with reverse dns delegation if the parent block is smaller
> than a /16 and maybe having specific contact or address information in
> specific circumstances.
>
>
>
> Mainly I'm asking to update my personal knowledge of how these records are
> used anymore.
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 4, 2023, 3:36 PM Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) <
> lyndon at orthanc.ca> wrote:
>
> It seems Aptum has decided they will no longer SWIP any of their
> address space.  I've been trying to get a SWIP for a /48 that we
> were allocated in 2017, but they refuse.  And I also see they have
> pro-actively gone in and un-SWIPed both our /24s.
>
> Since you are ignoring my tickets about this, maybe somebody from
> Aptum would care to speak up in public and defend this "policy?"
>
> --lyndon
>
>
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