March 1995 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Re: Internic address allocation policy
by sob＠academ.com 23 Mar '95

23 Mar '95

Which NIC are you talking about? The InterNIC has three different faces. One is run by ATT, one by General Atomics and one by Network Solutions. Are you abusing the use of NIC to mean the registration function by Network Solutions? Don't forget the RIPE NCC and APNIC are also NICs that have the authority to issue addresses as well. -- Stan | Academ Consulting Services |internet: sob(a)academ.com Olan | For more info on academ, see this |uucp: bcm!academ!sob Barber | URL- http://www.academ.com/academ |Opinions expressed are only mine.

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Re: Internic address allocation policy
by pfh＠nptn.org 23 Mar '95

23 Mar '95

Doug wrote on 3/23/95: >What effect will the change of ownership at the NIC have? >I for one would be wary of giving them information that I >want them to keep private; they are not a government agency >who is at least bound by some rules. Now that the NIC has >been sold to ______ (I have no idea if I am allowed to say >so I will put it in as a blank, but I am pretty sure this >is all public knowledge) would agreements to keep things >private really be secure with a new owner, etc? >From what I understand, and I may be speaking out of the string here, Network Solutions, Inc., a private company handling by contract with NSF the work that is known to be "registration services", has been bought out by another private company that is interested in continuing the registration services activity. I write this because I am unclear as to whether the NIC is being confused here with just Network Solutions or if there is another deal that is buying all of the virtual organizations that make up the InterNIC. Peter --- Peter F. Harter, Executive Director & General Counsel The National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) Offices: 30680 Bainbridge Road, Solon, Ohio 44139-2268 U.S.A. U.S. Mail: P.O. Box 1987, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-0187 U.S.A. E-mail: pfh(a)nptn.org Voice: 216/498-4050 Fax: 216/498-4051 World Wide Web (WWW): http://www.nptn.org/ Free-Net is a service mark of NPTN registered in the U.S. and other countries.

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Re: Internic address allocation policy
by Roger Fajman 21 Mar '95

21 Mar '95

> I fully agree that host autoconfiguration seems like a reasonable > technical solution to the problem of changing providers. The importance > of providing autoconfig for IPv6 *on day one* must be stressed over > and over again. You, as a member of the IESG, could certain help > with this. Host autoconfiguration is not the complete solution for easily changing providers. There are many places cuurently where IP network numbers appear: Router configuration files DNS configuration files DHCP configuration files Security filters (TCP wrapper, etc.) SNMP configuration files NETBIOS over TCP/IP host tables I'm sure that others can add to this list. In our organization, at least, not all of these things fall under the control of those of us who run the backbone network. Even when they do, there are still enough of them to make the job of changing them all non-trivial. So implementing host autoconfiguration will be a significant step towards making it easy to change providers, it is not the complete solution to the problem. While it's certainly true that the format of configuration files is not a protocol issue, it is important that the protocols provide a way of passing the necessary information around or making it unnecessary for it to be kept. Roger Fajman Telephone: +1 301 402 4265 National Institutes of Health BITNET: RAF@NIHCU Bethesda, Maryland, USA Internet: RAF(a)CU.NIH.GOV

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Re: Internic address allocation policy
by Vince Fuller 21 Mar '95

21 Mar '95

Speaking from a (large) user organization. I am very concerned about having the ISPs performing address allocation, particularly aggregating addresses. As a user, I want to be able to change my service provider if I get a better deal from a competitor or am having service difficulties with my current provider. Today's technology for managing addresses on individual computers makes it very hard for an organization to renumber. Literally every computer administrator needs to be in the loop. This can be a large loop when you have 13,000+ independently managed machines (like we do). How do we users get our say to ensure that an addressing architecture doesn't come into existence which tends to lock us into a particular provider? The right solution is to add enhancements to the Internet protocol suite to either automate renumbering as much as possible or to decouple the routing and addressing system from endpoint identification (in general, end-systems need only the latter, and adding such indirection would allow the assignment of addresses to be fully automatic). Unfortunately, while doing this has been discussed for a long time, not a lot of progress has been made in implementing and deploying viable solutions. And to make matters worse, it would appear the next generation of the Internet protocol is likely to do this wrong as well, which means that while it may provide adequate numbering space for assign a unique identifier to every atom in the Universe, it may not solve the route scaling problem. --Vince

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Internic address allocation policy
by yakov＠watson.ibm.com 21 Mar '95

21 Mar '95

Ref: Your note of Tue, 21 Mar 1995 09:32:27 -0600 (CST) Karl, >The implementation of this kind of thing MUST -- repeat -- MUST -- be >complete, or it won't get adopted. I could sell to people *right now* >the need and want to go to, for example, an integrated bootp/DNS style >thing, IF it was integrated all the way down to the level of plug and play. As I mentioned before, the IETF (the DNSIND WG) is actively working on the last piece of technology that would make host autoconfiguration possible, both for IPv4 and for IPv6. Talk to your friendly vendor(s), get them interested, see if they'll be willing to implement these capabilities. Yakov.

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Internic address allocation policy
by yakov＠watson.ibm.com 21 Mar '95

21 Mar '95

Ref: Your note of Tue, 21 Mar 1995 11:30:42 -0500 Jeff, >One solution is for IPv6 to fulfill its promise of providing >autoconfiguration (complete with secure, dynamic, DNS updating). >One of my fears is that autoconfiguration will not be a primary >(because most users won't need its capabilities, at least initially) >so will not be fully specified and implemented until it is too late. I fully agree that host autoconfiguration seems like a reasonable technical solution to the problem of changing providers. The importance of providing autoconfig for IPv6 *on day one* must be stressed over and over again. You, as a member of the IESG, could certain help with this. Yakov.

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Re: Internic address allocation policy
by jis＠mit.edu 21 Mar '95

21 Mar '95

At 8:23 3/21/95, yakov(a)watson.ibm.com wrote: >There are certain *fundamental* issues that one may choose to ignore. >However, this still doesn't change the fundamental property of these >issues. Relation between address space allocation/management and >the ability of the Internet routing system to scale is *one of these >issues*. There are also fundamental requirements. Not all of these requirements are strictly technical (like the requirement that routing scale "nicely"). I believe that one of the non-technical requirements, but a requirement nonetheless, is for end-user organizations to be able to change providers without an exorbitant penalty. With today's technology, renumbering (of a reasonably large organization) amounts to such a penalty. I didn't say that meeting this requirement would be easy. But that doesn't mean that it can simply be ignored because it is too hard. I point out that in the U.S. the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mandated that 800 numbers be portable. I am sure that created a real routing headache within the telephone network. I can make all the same scaling arguments that you use about Internet routing also apply to the phone network's 800 numbers. Doesn't change the fact of the FCC action. My concern is this. If we march down the aggregation path too far we will have ISPs (both large and small) that require customers to get addresses from them where they (the ISP) maintain ownership of the address space. At some point some (perhaps large) ISP's service will degrade and customers seeking to move to another provider will suddenly realize how locked in they are. If enough customers are put into such a situation many will call for regulation of the network (if it isn't already in place by then) and demand IP address portability. We can then wind up with such portability being mandated from on high, with little thought. I would prefer to recognize this problem now and begin to see how we can address it. One solution is for IPv6 to fulfill its promise of providing autoconfiguration (complete with secure, dynamic, DNS updating). One of my fears is that autoconfiguration will not be a priority (because most users won't need its capabilities, at least immediately) so will not be fully specified and implemented until it is too late. -Jeff

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Internic address allocation policy
by yakov＠watson.ibm.com 21 Mar '95

21 Mar '95

Ref: Your note of Mon, 20 Mar 1995 14:26:03 -0500 Jeff, >... I am very concerned about having the ISPs performing address >allocation, particularly addressing aggregation. There are certain *fundamental* issues that one may choose to ignore. However, this still doesn't change the fundamental property of these issues. Relation between address space allocation/management and the ability of the Internet routing system to scale is *one of these issues*. Here is a brief recap of what had been stated on MANY occasions. The need to accommodate routing in the growing Internet requires to perform routing information aggregation/abstaction. Both the current routing technology, as well as proposals for new routing technologies (e.g. Nimrod or Unified) assume that the hierarchical routing information aggregation/abstraction will be used as *the* fundamental technique to deal with the growth in overhead costs of running the routing. For the hierarchical routing to work, addresses have to reflect *where* in the network you are. Changing providers means you've changed where you are, which in turn means you may need to change your addresses. Host autoconfiguration capabilities isn't a "rocket space" science, but would certainly greatly help to accommodate the ability to change providers in presence of hierarchical routing. Granted this wouldn't address the problem of dealing with the installed based, but we are not aware of any other alternative (except for the NAT boxes and/or application layer gateway alternative) that wouldn't require *any* changes to the installed base, while at the same time would accommodate hierarchical routing and would allow to change providers. Noel Chiappa & Yakov Rekhter

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Re: Internic address allocation policy
by jis＠mit.edu 20 Mar '95

20 Mar '95

At 22:05 3/19/95, Vadim Antonov wrote: >You may like it or dislike it but nation-wide backbone providers >effectively run the Internet nowadays. It is a rare case when >big businesses actually introduced some common sense in the way >things are done architecture-wise. Why not to do the same with >the address allocation? Speaking from a (large) user organization. I am very concerned about having the ISPs performing address allocation, particularly aggregating addresses. As a user, I want to be able to change my service provider if I get a better deal from a competitor or am having service difficulties with my current provider. Today's technology for managing addresses on individual computers makes it very hard for an organization to renumber. Literally every computer administrator needs to be in the loop. This can be a large loop when you have 13,000+ independently managed machines (like we do). How do we users get our say to ensure that an addressing architecture doesn't come into existence which tends to lock us into a particular provider? -Jeff

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Re: Internic address allocation policy
by Vadim Antonov 20 Mar '95

20 Mar '95

> How do we users get our say to ensure that an addressing architecture > doesn't come into existence which tends to lock us into a particular > provider? Fund my TRAP research? (See pre-publication drafts in ftp.sprintlink.net:engineer/avg). I'm doing it on my own time. --vadim

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