On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, Jim Browning wrote:
A. a single allocation capable of supporting planned growth, or B. incremental allocations of *contiguous* blocks
InterNIC's current CIDR allocation practice does not support either of these options.
Here's an idea. Let new ISP's reserve large blocks (say /16's) in 65/8, 66/8, .... but don't let them actually use these addresses on the global Internet. Then, the ISP can run a Network Address Translation gateway and give their customers 65/8 addresses while still using a chunk from their provider's block. And they can switch providers without forcing their customers to renumber. Then, after they have demonstrated that they should be given a /16, open up the block they were given in 65/8 for use without the NAT. Of course, there is one little problem with this.... bash$ whois 65 Air Force Logistics Command (ASN-LOGNET) LOGNET-AS 65 IANA (RESERVED-7) Reserved 64.0.0.0 - 95.0.0.0 bash$ whois 96 Army Finance and Accounting Office (ASN-JTELS) JTELS-BEN1-AS 96 IANA (RESERVED-8) Reserved 96.0.0.0 - 126.0.0.0 How did these guys get such big chunks of address space reserved?
The day to day implementation of policy by the InterNIC has increasingly critical impact on our industry, to the point of controlling who has the opportunity to succeed and who does not. IMHO, it is imperative that:
1. this function be performed in an understandable manner, 2. objective criteria be consistently applied 3. the criteria in use be publicly available, and 4. there be defined mechanisms for the 'appeal' of decisions made in the processing of allocation requests.
Recent experience and observation leads me to conclude that these imperatives are perhaps not being met. Am I all wet????
I think that the fundamental problem here is that the Internic is fundamentally clueless about important issues such as global routing and *BUSINESS* issues. They are behaving a lot like a government bureaucracy or a regulatory agency. I don't really see how this can be fixed with the current system of having a US government agency writing a contract with a private US company to provide a fundamental international infrastructure service! Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com