Also Sprach jlewis@lewis.org
Based on recent activity with www.arin.net, I think they're more concerned with the look & feel of their web site than the actual content. I'd say fire the graphic design person/people and use that money to simply keep the site up to date and functional or to pay more IP analysts.
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There does seem to be either a lack of consistency or some conflicting policies depending on how many allocations you've gotten. You might get used to one policy and then find it no longer applies to you.
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I've run into this too...having ARIN point fingers at past growth and simultaneously quoting rfc2050 saying to only request 3 months worth. IMO, that policy sucks, which is why I suggested someone write an update for rfc2050. Actually, once you get used to dealing with ARIN, filling out the forms the way they want, and have your IP allocation data in a format that lends itself to easily filling in the blanks on the request form, getting more space isn't that big a deal, but it still is a pain to do, requires updating filters, router configs, routing registries, etc. and doing it several times a year just seems like a waste of time. Once a year would be more acceptable.
We're in agreement on these points... FWIW, our SWIP's are perfectly up to do. While they're not filed automatically by our billing/provisioning system, it does put in a ticket into our ticket tracking system to tell one of our technicians to do it...and our billing/provisioning system is *anal* about it, too. :)
Suffice it to say, that would not have been practical in our case.
If that's the sort of detail you gave ARIN, it's no surprise you've not gotten what you want from them.
No, I gave ARIN considerably more detail than that...I just don't care to share what could be considered internal, proprietary information about our network on a public mailing list. We don't have a great deal to hide, and we don't do things drastically differently than many other networks, but I'd rather not broadcast how we're set up far and wide, thanks.
allocation...we just, again, wanted to renumber out of the PA (what does the "A" stand for, there, by the way?) space, with a /20+. And, no, I'm
PI = provider indepentent (you can take it with you if you change providers) PA = provider assigned (switch providers and you lose the space) or were you being rhetorical for some reason?
No, I knew the concepts, I just couldn't figure out what the "A" expanded out to. Nothing more.
going to have to renumber in 3 months if you want all that renumbering to be into a single block. Like it or not, those appear to be the rules.
Yup, thus my comment(s) about common sense being dead.
given the allocations (both PA and PI) that we have, and we're desiring (for business reasons as well as altruistic) to renumber out of PA space into fewer, but larger, PI blocks. ARIN has been a stumbling block to us accomplishing these things every step of the way.
Other than doing your part to slow routing table growth (and the obvious desire to get as much space as possible, as infrequently as possible from ARIN), why do you care how many IP blocks (and what sizes) you have? For traffic engineering purposes, there are actually advantages to more smaller blocks.
Agreed...having smaller blocks allows finer grained control of traffic...but for the reasons you noted, there, we're trying to "Do the Right Thing", as I said. While we're a business, and are in it to make money, (and successfully do so), we still try to have something of a community minded approach to dealing with issues of commons (such as routing table size, ip address depletion, etc.). I know its rare to see an ISP actually care about things like that for other's benefit...but that's really, a large part of the reason that we try to do this. Of course, not having to go back to ARIN every 3 months is a benefit as well, so its not completely altruistic, but there is certainly an element of altruism (believe it or not) to it.
ARIN has failed to accomplish everything that it was created to do. Its whole purpose for existence has basically not been served.
It makes a big profit though :) Have you seen their financial reports?
I've been scared to look. I'm already cynical enough about ARIN.
Well...as someone else mentioned...apparently you can never fill out an ARIN form without ever being asked for clarification on a different form. Why don't they just have you fill out the second form in the first place?
Practice.
Well...that gives me hope for the future...and other than being annoying, wasn't really the crux of my issues with ARIN.
And some people wonder why most of the world dreads dealing with ARIN.
Most of the world doesn't have to...just North America.
True...but my point is still basically valid, if you ignore the ethnocentrism. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456