Nanog:

I work as the Network Architect for a multinational corporation, Ball Corporation (http://www.ball.com).

Currently, we hold a Class B network, 162.18.0.0/16 and have been multi-homed in the past, and will be multi-homed in the future, and have our own AS. The network is very large, as we’ve used this addressing internally for our facilities in North America and Canada. We’ve allocated over 220 subnets.

We now have a European division, Ball-Europe (http://www.ball-europe.com). They have RFC 1918 addressing internally, and have the usual problems with NAT and overload addressing.

I’m starting the process of filling out an application to register the company, based in Ratingen, DE with RIPE as a Local Internet Registry (LIR) so that we can request a /18 (or /17 if we can get one) for the 40 some production facilities of Ball-Europe, each of which will come across a VPN network and be presented in one block to the ISP uplinks.

I was wondering, basically, if I have any chance at this? While RIPE clearly states the admission policy is open to any organization, in order to get PIR (Provider Independent routing) being a RIPE NCC is required, and I don’t know if a corporation would have a shot. Currently, we are not an ARIN member, but hold the Class B.

The corporation exists in 6 EU nations, and I can demonstrate the requirement for >2048 individual IP addresses.

I realize this the NORTH AMERICAN Network operator group, and most of you deal with ARIN, but I thought some members might have experience in this area as well.

Thanks in advance.