Howdy. This afternoon I was working with a used switch I recently purchased when I noticed it still had the previous owner's IP in it. I noted that it wasn't a reserved address that I recognized so I looked it up. As it turned out the IP belonged to Occidental Petroleum Corp (oxy.com) and was part of a /16 (155.224.0.0/16). The fact that it they had a /16 was a bit surprising. Seeing how it was allocated back in 1992, I guess I really shouldn't be that surprised. I figured they must have enough remote offices to reasonably use a large portion of that /16. While loading their website I noted that www.oxy.com fell into another netblock (208.35.252.113/24). I was curious enough (read: bored) that I eventually queried Arin's WHOIS for Occidental Petroleum and was quite surprised at what I saw. http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=occidental%20petroleum OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM (OCCIDE-1) Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OPC) Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OPC-2) Occidental Petroleum IP (OPI-1) Occidental Petroleum Corporation (AS26517) OXYHOUAS-01 26517 OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106789196846411 (NET-63-166-189-0-1) 63.166.189.0 - 63.166.189.255 OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106789094446405 (NET-63-166-185-0-1) 63.166.185.0 - 63.166.185.255 OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106789068846359 (NET-63-166-184-0-1) 63.166.184.0 - 63.166.184.255 OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106790118446425 (NET-63-166-225-0-1) 63.166.225.0 - 63.166.225.255 OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-110111612871621 (NET-65-161-178-224-1) 65.161.178.224 - 65.161.178.255 OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-349201920042097 (NET-208-35-252-0-1) 208.35.252.0 - 208.35.252.255 Occidental Petroleum Corp. OXY1-NET (NET-155-224-0-0-1) 155.224.0.0 - 155.224.255.255 Occidental Petroleum Corporation OXY-2 (NET-170-189-0-0-1) 170.189.0.0 - 170.189.255.255 Occidental Petroleum Corporation OXY-3 (NET-199-248-164-0-1) 199.248.164.0 - 199.248.168.255 Occidental Petroleum IP FON-106769945643237 (NET-63-163-205-0-1) 63.163.205.0 - 63.163.205.255 Occidental Petroleum IP FON-106780672044417 (NET-63-165-112-0-1) 63.165.112.0 - 63.165.112.255 They have not one /16 but two /16s, eight /24s, one /22, and one /27. Does this seem a little excessive to anyone else? I can think of a dozen state-run universities off of the top of my head that could never dream of justifying a /16, let alone more. I hate to pummel a dead horse but would it be worthwhile to ask these corporations to relinguish netblocks that they don't use or can't justify keeping? "Because I'm paying you" isn't a good enough reason IMHO. Would it be worthwhile to have organizations with direct allocations submit a netblock usage summary every 4-5 years to justify keeping their existing blocks? I know it might be hard for ARIN to justify taking back someone's netblocks. It just irks me to no ends to see a considerable amount of wasted netspace such as this. Pardon me for asking because I imagine this has been discussed many times before. Justin Shore