On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Jeff McAdams wrote:
Ignoring, for the moment, that absolute absurdity of that type of procedure...you forget what I've now said twice...that ARIN said as clarification after I got the first block that renumbering wasn't a consideration, full stop.
I don't see how that's at all absurd. You said you had a /20 and some additional blocks of PA space. What's wrong with doing a slow renumber of customers into your PI block? When you utilize 80% of the PI block, ask ARIN for more space to continue renumbering. Note: I'm not saying renumber into PI block-A, then ask for a bigger block and renumber out of A into bigger block-B...just an additional block that you can continue to use both for new customers and to continue renumbering customers who were using your PA space. Where's the crazy part here?
Either ARIN's policies are screwed up beyond even what I thought to begin with, or their communications with customers/ISPs/whatever is absolutely pitiful. Most likely, both.
ARIN's policies do change over time, which can be surprising and annoying (you get used to a policy or think you know their policy...time goes by, and then you find what you know is invalid). It's a pain, but it's life.
During the first request, we proposed a timeline of 6 months to a year for renumber, if I remember correctly. And please don't even *think* of suggesting that we should have done it in 3 months...that's just laughable.
It's alot of work, but laughable? Why? You're talking to someone who simultaneously moved an ISP's physical network from one building to another (across town), changed backbone providers, multihomed, did BGP for the first time, and renumbered from 2 /20's of PA space (we weren't using much of the second /20 and with inefficiencies cleaned up, really only needed most of a /20) into a /20 of a reserved /19 of PI space in about a week (all at the same time including moving customer T1's) while the old landlord was threatening lock us out, and the old backbone provider threatening to shut us off! It took alot of planning, a week of very long days, and alot of customer hand holding, but it can be done. But all that said, who said you should have to renumber inside of 3 months?
FWIW, the second block that we got just a short time ago, was an extension of the previous /20, to make it a /19...not that this is relevant, in any way, to any of the issues raised. We still haven't never received from ARIN, a sufficiently large block to be able to renumber out of the currently utilized space as was offered for the first request, and strongly requested for the second; and the communications that we received after the first request was a flat out lie about the consideration of renumbering in allocations.
Is there some reason you need to have 1 PI block big enough to handle renumbering out of all your PA blocks? Why can't you renumber some of the PA space into PI space, return the no longer used PA space to P, and get more PI blocks from ARIN to continue the renumbering?
There is no was for ARIN to get out of this one smelling like roses...they screwed up...probably twice, depending on your opinions about policies...but at least once in the lie about renumbering considerations.
I like to bash ARIN as much as the next member, but I just don't see it here. Either I'm not getting some part of your story, or you've got some really weird ideas about PI space and renumbering.
FWIW, the first request we made was for a /19, which would have been the smallest single block that could have been allocated to us to allow us to renumber into; and the second request was for an /18, with the same reasoning. We got /20's both times (with the second /20 being the second half of the /19 of the first /20).
If you're really using a /18 of PA space, and using it efficiently according to ARIN guidelines, I'd be really surprised if you filled out the application for space and said "here's how we're using a /18 worth of PA space, we'd like to renumber from it into PI space, and will do so over X months." and ARIN didn't allocate you a /18. If you've already tried this and failed, it may just be a matter of how you're filling out the form. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis *jlewis@lewis.org*| I route System Administrator | therefore you are Atlantic Net | _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________