The SWIP stuff I cleaned up included stuff from the pre-2000 period when the internet was a kinder, gentler place. NAT also wasn't a thing so if a company had 1000 PCs you allocated them multiple /24s. So SWIP was a thing. And yes, it was how you justified more space. Once NAT happened and we switched to mostly handing customers /32s and started recovering larger allocations, the SWIP also stopped and the bitrot started to set in. About that time I became less involved due to being pulled other directions so no one was maintaining the SWIP. When someone started whining about whois data being outdated probably 5+ years ago I just went in and removed the swips. An interesting datapoint is that last I checked our original pair of /24s that were provided to us by our original tier 1 provider in 1994 is still listing us in the whois data even though we haven't used that carrier or the address space for 20+ years now. On Fri, May 5, 2023, 6:48 AM richey goldberg <richey.goldberg@gmail.com> wrote:
The only real reason I can think that you would want space SWIPed to you is if you are trying to get an allocation of your own and trying to prove you have existing space to renumber out of.
In 25 years of working for ISPs I don’t think I’ve ever worked for one that SWIPed IP space of any size to an end user and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a request. Mostly because no one wants to put a list of customers out in the public domain.
In the early 2000s I worked for a local provider who had a competing Muni who was using whois and rDNS to target all of the local provider’s customers. I overheard two of their sales guys while eating at a local restaurant telling each other how they could use that info for leads and which tech was helping them get it. I went back to the office that afternoon and sanitized our rDNS to put a stop to that.
-richey
*From: *NANOG <nanog-bounces+richey.goldberg=gmail.com@nanog.org> on behalf of Forrest Christian (List Account) <lists@packetflux.com> *Date: *Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 10:09 PM *To: *Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) <lyndon@orthanc.ca> *Cc: *nanog list <nanog@nanog.org> *Subject: *Re: Aptum refuses to SWIP
I can't speak for aptum, but I'm curious as to why this is important to you? I'm not trying to discount this at all, just curious why this matters in the internet of 2023.
I went through a couple years back and removed all of our mostly outdated SWIP data and replaced it with generic information. But I run an eyeballs network and I don't remember the last time we allocated something shorter than a /28 to a customer.
I can think of a couple reasons it might be good for the swip to still reflect the actual customer. But most of the ones I can think of don't apply as much anymore. About the only things I can think about which may matter has to do with reverse dns delegation if the parent block is smaller than a /16 and maybe having specific contact or address information in specific circumstances.
Mainly I'm asking to update my personal knowledge of how these records are used anymore.
On Thu, May 4, 2023, 3:36 PM Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) < lyndon@orthanc.ca> wrote:
It seems Aptum has decided they will no longer SWIP any of their address space. I've been trying to get a SWIP for a /48 that we were allocated in 2017, but they refuse. And I also see they have pro-actively gone in and un-SWIPed both our /24s.
Since you are ignoring my tickets about this, maybe somebody from Aptum would care to speak up in public and defend this "policy?"
--lyndon