Also sprach Sean M. Doran
I have also suggested fairly seriously to some registry-types that it is fair to allocate individual /32s as necessary to contain address consumption.
Praise the Lord! I'm not alone in this. I've always thought prefix-length filtering was incredibly inane. Since the length of the prefix bears little correlation to the "importance" of the network being advertised, there is little reason to filter based on the length of the prefix. Filter flapping routes? Sure. Filter RFC1918 space? No brainer. Filtering on prefix length? There's just no solidly backed up reasoning to support it that I've heard. A network that has the operational need to be multi-homed will add a route to the default-free area, its as simple as that (barring some major architectural changes to the protocols in use on the Internet.) If we're going to have the routes in the default-free, let's at least try to minimize. Encourage re-numbering into fewer blocks and returning those blocks to ARIN? Here's a thought. When you give out a new block of IP addresses to an organization, require that, within a certain time period (a year?) they relinquish two blocks back to ARIN. Obviously there is going to be a limit to how far you can go with this...if the organiztion only has a single block, then it can't turn two in if its allocated a new block since that would leave it with no space. A policy like this (and this is obviously *extremely* rough) would have the effect of encouraging re-numbering, and designing networks in ways that renumbering isn't quite as onerous, it would also reduce the number of blocks being advertised by the organization. IgLou, for example, has 6 blocks that we advertise...we're pretty much small fry, but it would not be all that difficult for me to free up several of my blocks for relinquishing back to ARIN. Now, IgLou obviously isn't going to have a huge effect on reducing routing table size, but over time, this would reduce the number of routes in the default-free zone...or at least keep the growth in check. The trick is that a network needs to be able to obtain network blocks that are reasonably sized for their needs with little to no hassle. There are all sorts of variations on this policy theme that could be used to balance the needs of the Internet as a whole. The bottom line, though, is that the current policies in use don't address the problems that it is claimed that they were instituted to address...primarily address depletion and routing table size. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456