Policy Statement on Address Space Allocations
Peter Galbavy <peter@demon.net> writes:
Thanks for amitting at least that much ;-). Would you care to share your thoughts on less flawed paradigms that will work with current or near-future kit ({hard,firm,soft}ware for the non-british)?
I wish I knew. In this I am the worst type of couch potato. ....
So stop critising "paradigms" without proposing better ones or at least research the rationales and history behind them.
Yes, CIDR works if addresses are allocated *somewhat* topologically.
And in the case of (I am guessing) > 70% of RIPE NCC allocated addresses are not.
First you missed the emphasis on *somewhat*. Second you are guessing wrong.
From both of the above it seems that you only know of and are only concerned with your own particular situation.
This is no ones "fault", just the way the policy is. Therefore I say the policy is WRONG.
What is the better policy?
The continental component in address space allocation is pure policy and has little to do with CIDR. The policy only seems unreasonable when considering only the issue you raise.
But it is the *primary* issue. What else is there that influences how addresses are allocated in a CIDR or hierarchical way ?
More local topology than continental one is *very* important.
We have e-mail for admin - it is timezone orthoganal. The existance of the RIPE NCC should just be remote, local staff for the InterNIC.
Fine with me. Do RIEP and theother contributors agree? We can re-organise starting next week.
If the RIPE NCC applies a "local model" then it is not conforming to the policies of IANA and the IAB that you keep referring to.
The RIPE NCC applies local policies within the boundaries of the global policies.
Personally I believe that even this issue is irrelevant for providers of the size of Demon. It makes no difference where you get a /16 from.
Except you will not, even with correct justifications, give us one for our dial up services.
To wash some dirty laundry here ...
I could help you washing in detail but I do not think this is appropriate in all these fora. For the record I will summarise: Demon is statically assigning IP addresses to dialup customers on a large scale. This results in adresses being used per customer and not per dial-in port. Obviously then number of customers is less limited than that of dial in ports. There is concern about the wastefulness of this practise on a large scale and the non-linear effects it could have on address space usage. Hence it is *global*, read IANA, policy to strongly discourage this practise and not to allocate more addresses than three months worth of usage. This is not just an NCC policy! Indeed we have allocated you a /19 to start with in addition to the address space you have been allocated for other purposes than dial up IP. Of course you will receive further allocations within the range of the above policy whenever you need them. Of course we will do our best to make the further allocations aggregateable with previous ones. Assignments of address space by local IRs to customers have to be registered in the RIPE (whois) database. You have raised that your commercial interest of keeping your customer list confidential should outweigh this registration requirement in the case of individuals because of the special characterisitcs of the (consumer) market you operate in. We have recognised that the tradeoff between the benefit of registration and the commercial interests of individual dialup providers is indeed special and consequently have worked with you(!), IANA and the other regional registries to establish a global policy for this special case. This policy has to take into account the need for verification of assignments since the registration requirement has been dropped and the database is not available for verification. We have worked with you in this matter, you have agreed to the result. I think it is *very* inappropriate to publicly abuse those who have worked with you and to throw polemics at compromises some of which you have even suggested and all of which you have agreed to. I will leave the polemics for what they are.
I wish I had the time, but it appears that we will have to make the time to get more involed. sigh.
Yes, it is more appropriate than polemicising publicly.
What we do *not* do is consider *individual* interests of some over the ones of others. If we would do that we would eliminate our "raison d'etre".
Why not. We are not a communist society are we ? Each individual member of RIPE have their own unique requirements in a commercial and academically challenging world. We have a USP (Unique Selling Point) of giving our paying customers there own IP address (OK - it is not unique, but close enough). We have built propretary technology that allows our users to use *any* of our dial in points and get the same service, with the same IP number etc etc, and as one of our primary USPs we cannot allow the RIPE NCC to try to change that. ... The RIPE NCC model probably would work if it took into account that fact that its members are (on the whole) commercial organisations that sell differing products and services and have different requirements of the NCC. This does not appear to be the case.
You have received sufficient address space for your present needs and you have been assured that -unless there are policy changes- you will receive enough for your future needs. The same policy is applied to everyone. --- Polemic mode on ---- I have the slight suspicion that for you the only good model is one that does exactly what *you* want, everyone else be damned. --- Polemic mode off ---- Daniel
I wish I knew. In this I am the worst type of couch potato. ....
So stop critising "paradigms" without proposing better ones or at least research the rationales and history behind them.
OK OK. I am trying to make some form of contribution :) Give me a little time.
And in the case of (I am guessing) > 70% of RIPE NCC allocated addresses are not.
First you missed the emphasis on *somewhat*. Second you are guessing wrong.
OK. But for informational purposes is there a figure available ?
From both of the above it seems that you only know of and are only concerned with your own particular situation.
I would have to say, from reading my own e-mails that maybe I have given that impression. Let me reqind a bit and summarse it differently below... This should *not* have been the case.
This is no ones "fault", just the way the policy is. Therefore I say the policy is WRONG.
What is the better policy?
Maybe that is what this thread can begine... a discussion of a different/ better policy ? Who knows ?
More local topology than continental one is *very* important.
Yes. How can we help to make this happen ? Are there tools, that if we make sure our RIPE records are up to date that will help you in your allocations ? ISPs are not given the opportunity to apply for topological *and* portable address space (eg we are multihomed to the US - Sprint allocations are not "good enough") from the InterNIC - we are sent to the RIPE NCC because our physical location happens to be within a geographical domain managed by the RIPE NCC.
We have e-mail for admin - it is timezone orthoganal. The existance of the RIPE NCC should just be remote, local staff for the InterNIC.
Fine with me. Do RIEP and theother contributors agree? We can re-organise starting next week.
I am not sure I meant you to agree with me on this one... :-)
If the RIPE NCC applies a "local model" then it is not conforming to the policies of IANA and the IAB that you keep referring to.
The RIPE NCC applies local policies within the boundaries of the global policies.
The problem is that various people posting to this list change which set of policies they refer to whenever the "other" set suits better for their arguments. One set of goals please. Please.
I could help you washing in detail but I do not think this is appropriate in all these fora. For the record I will summarise:
Demon is statically assigning IP addresses to dialup customers on a large scale. This results in adresses being used per customer and not per dial-in port. Obviously then number of customers is less limited than that of dial in ports. There is concern about the wastefulness of this practise on a large scale and the non-linear effects it could have on address space usage. Hence it is *global*, read IANA, policy to strongly discourage this practise and not to allocate more addresses than three months worth of usage. This is not just an NCC policy!
In the way we assign numbers, it is very linear. Just not all the hosts are reachable all the time. We return ICMP Host Unreacable from our core routers when a dial up customer is not logged in. I will try to explain some of the reasons we do it this way below. But reasons do not change or infulence the current RIPE/IANA policies - which is the thing I am trying to highlight for "discussion". I am *NOT* trying (I know that it may look that way) to say that the RIPE NCC is full of people who don't care and are not doing "the right thing". This is patently untrue... Daniel et al are doing a very good job within their interpretation of (in my belief) an incorrect, incomplete frame work.
Indeed we have allocated you a /19 to start with in addition to the address space you have been allocated for other purposes than dial up IP. Of course you will receive further allocations within the range of the above policy whenever you need them. Of course we will do our best to make the further allocations aggregateable with previous ones.
The primary issue with this one is not that of not getting the address space, but of getting additional address space in a timely fashion. By the time I write this we would have taken on another 150 - 200 customers since Friday. That is almost one /24. This (at a guess for growth) gives us about 2 months for a /19. It takes too long (in the real world - with holidays, sickness etc) to apply for a new allocation only days or a week before this (or the next) block runs out. If we can apply for a /19 at least 30 days before we need it then this may solve the problem, but I do not think this would work within the current applications processing methods. Or would it ? I don't actually know at this point, since we have been very concerned at how long it took to get the last block.
Assignments of address space by local IRs to customers have to be registered in the RIPE (whois) database. You have raised that your commercial interest of keeping your customer list confidential should outweigh this registration requirement in the case of individuals because of the special characterisitcs of the (consumer) market you operate in. We have recognised that the tradeoff between the benefit of registration and the commercial interests of individual dialup providers is indeed special and consequently have worked with you(!), IANA and the other regional registries to establish a global policy for this special case. This policy has to take into account the need for verification of assignments since the registration requirement has been dropped and the database is not available for verification.
It is not (even) a commercial confidence interest, since I believe that the RIPE NCC could be trusted with this information, but one of *LAW*. The EEC (as it was then) quite correctly required the UK parliment to pass a law called the Data Protection Act in 1984. In my opinion this act is far *too* weak, but even in its current form does not allow us to pass these detais on, with a small number of exceptions.
We have worked with you in this matter, you have agreed to the result. I think it is *very* inappropriate to publicly abuse those who have worked with you and to throw polemics at compromises some of which you have even suggested and all of which you have agreed to. I will leave the polemics for what they are.
OK. OK. I will publicly apologise for any offense I may have given to the *people* involved. You have worked very hard trying to be fair. I just do not think that the underlying policies from which this fairness is drawn is correct for all situations. I will not apologies for critising policies that I believe to be flawed or the organisations that blindly implement them. I *do* believe that people run these organisations and that the policies should allow these people to behave like human beings and make judgements based on experience rather than a fixed, immutable set of criteria.
I wish I had the time, but it appears that we will have to make the time to get more involed. sigh.
Yes, it is more appropriate than polemicising publicly.
I am here now in Amsterdam at the RIPE meeting, I am happy to try to make a contribution.
The RIPE NCC model probably would work if it took into account that fact that its members are (on the whole) commercial organisations that sell differing products and services and have different requirements of the NCC. This does not appear to be the case.
You have received sufficient address space for your present needs and you have been assured that -unless there are policy changes- you will receive enough for your future needs. The same policy is applied to everyone.
--- Polemic mode on ----
I have the slight suspicion that for you the only good model is one that does exactly what *you* want, everyone else be damned.
--- Polemic mode off ----
Nope. I am always open to critisism and people pointing out me errors. I do not think that the only policy that would work is the one that would fit my situation, but owing to a lack of involment in the "politics" of the Internet in the past 24 months or so (how long I have been in the serice provider game officially) those policies have happened without me seeing them, and so the bits that could make it all work for me/us have been either missed or overlooked. For a bit of background on why Demon use static IP allocation, and how, for those who are interested as opposed to just being opposed... When the service started (and I was just a customers) there was *NO* other reasonably priced IP service for individuals / small companies in the UK. Anyone want to disagree ? Right... Demon were set up to provide and Internet *service* not *access*. Please note my terminology on this one; Internet Service: Being a real host, providing full SMTP capabilities (ie mail transport, not mail access), fixed/unique FQDN, in effect being a full Internet site when connected. Internet Access: Getting access to WWW/POP3 etc, "using" the Internet to get information through search engines, e-mail stored in a mailbox etc etc. Being a Web surfer tupe consumer. It is difficult to enumerate the difference to well, but I think most people who have thought about it could. Some people also think of it exactly the other way around. We now have very close to 60000 dialup customers, each with their own FQDN and IP address. So far this "just" overflows a class B, once we include all all the other bits of equipment and the slightly sparse address space in the "secure" /24 subnets. Thre are a number benefits of static IP, just as there are disadvantages. We use a proprietary dynamic routeing protcol, which has been worked on very heavily over the years to provide (effectivley) invisible routeing changes when customer log in to the lines. The disadantages are the point of this discussion. I know a number of customers who use the IP addresses of the dialups for security and filtering (do that with a dynamic IP address). Another one (not so often used, but damned useful) is the ability to continue TCP sessions between disconnets (many a large FTP saved my this). There are others, but this e-mail is long enough already. This is a religious argument that I do not believe has any *real* impact on address space allocation except for a cosmetic one. So what if we gave almost every PC/Mac/UNIXen box in the world an IP address. Even in IPv4 space there are plenty for the coming years. IPv6 may be adopted for real in a few years, and by then it all changes anyhow. *ANOTHER* important one, but much more unlikely, is that we may one day (and pigs will grow wings and fly) offer all our customers a *permanent* connection to the 'net - what then ? The telecoms technology allows for it - it is just down to tariffing. Just a thought. Again - I have not inteded any of this as an attack on the dedication of the RIPE NCC staff, I just get carried away (I think I am human after all), Anyway, enough of this, I need to do some "work" here - I left my colleagues at RIPE while I cam to our offices to try to catch up with e-mail... Regards, -- Peter Galbavy peter@demon.net @ Demon Internet phone://44/181/371_3700 http://www.wonderland.org/~peter/ snail://UK/N3_1TT/London/42_Hendon_Lane/Demon_Internet_Ltd/
On Mon, 29 Jan 1996, Peter Galbavy wrote:
ISPs are not given the opportunity to apply for topological *and* portable address space (eg we are multihomed to the US - Sprint allocations are not "good enough") from the InterNIC - we are sent to the RIPE NCC because our physical location happens to be within a geographical domain managed by the RIPE NCC.
You are the biggest ISP in Europe aren't you? How big? Couldn't you spend a few quid on incorporating Demon Internet Services Inc. in the USA? Wouldn't you then be eligible for IP addresses from the US Internic?
Demon is statically assigning IP addresses to dialup customers on a large scale. This results in adresses being used per customer and not per dial-in port. Obviously then number of customers is less limited than that of dial in ports. There is concern about the wastefulness of this practise on a large scale and the non-linear effects it could have on address space usage. Hence it is *global*, read IANA, policy to strongly discourage this practise and not to allocate more addresses than three months worth of usage. This is not just an NCC policy!
In the way we assign numbers, it is very linear. Just not all the hosts are reachable all the time. We return ICMP Host Unreacable from our core routers when a dial up customer is not logged in. I will try to explain
In a classless IPV4 world in which the old Class A address area is in production use, would we have enough available IP addresses for providers to do this on a large scale assuming that they would have near 100% utilization in the blocks that were being allocated statically? Didn't the experiment with 39/8 show that it was safe to allocate classlessly out of the old Class A addresses? Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com
You are the biggest ISP in Europe aren't you? How big? Couldn't you spend a few quid on incorporating Demon Internet Services Inc. in the USA? Wouldn't you then be eligible for IP addresses from the US Internic?
This has been consdidered I understand... but we want to play the game and make the rules better, not cheat :-)
In a classless IPV4 world in which the old Class A address area is in production use, would we have enough available IP addresses for providers to do this on a large scale assuming that they would have near 100% utilization in the blocks that were being allocated statically?
Didn't the experiment with 39/8 show that it was safe to allocate classlessly out of the old Class A addresses?
I think so and yes :-) Regards, -- Peter Galbavy peter@demon.net @ Demon Internet phone://44/181/371_3700 http://www.wonderland.org/~peter/ snail://UK/N3_1TT/London/42_Hendon_Lane/Demon_Internet_Ltd/
participants (3)
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Daniel Karrenberg -
Michael Dillon -
Peter Galbavy