On Wed, 27 May 1998, Karl Denninger wrote:
It is also fascinating that Sprint's argument for their filtering (per their web page) is that ARIN has espoused this as a "proper" thing to do. They even provide a web reference to ARIN's statements in this matter.
As an ARIN AC member I'd like to see ARIN send them a note requesting that they remove this historical revisionism from their website.
I have to ask what in the dickens ARIN thinks it is doing advocating *policy* on address filtering for ISPs,
As far as I know, ARIN is doing no such thing. Seems to me we have here a document that could have been worded better and probably would have been worded better if anyone had cared to comment on it.
[This is a request as an ARIN AC member, who has tried to get a lot of these kinds of questions answered from officers and trustees of ARIN]
Seems to me that you are an AC member that has demanded ARIN provide a lot more public documentation of its policies and are, no doubt, a prime motivator for the production of the document in question. Personally, I think this could have been better handled by sending some suggestions on wording directly to the author of the document rather than raising a big public fuss about it. I would suggest that the section in question be replaced with this: In the past, major transit providers have claimed that technical and implementation constraints on the Internet routing system cause them to enforce various policies in order to reduce the number of globally advertised routes and preven the possibility of routing overload. Typically we see these providers setting limits on the size of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) prefixes added to the routing tables or filtering of non-aggregated routes. To aid in the efficient deployment of CIDR, ISPs are encouraged to request address space from their upstream provider. The upstream provider is to maintain control of the allocated block unless explicitly and contractually stated otherwise. In an effort to ensure that CIDR is implemented and utilized as efficiently as possible, ARIN issues blocks of addresses on appropriate "CIDR-supported" bit boundaries. Determination of IP address space allocation size is the responsibility of ARIN. I haven't taken the time to review the rest of the document so if anyone else has suggestions on revising the wording, I would appreciate it if you would contact the author directly. And I think some thanks are in order for the ARIN staff who are undertaking this thankless task of getting the whole IP allocation function better documented for all of us. I can't think of a worse attitude to take than telling them that they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. -- Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting Memra Communications Inc. - E-mail: michael@memra.com http://www.memra.com - *check out the new name & new website*