No, this is how the RIR process works. The RIRs request their next /8s and begin the "cleaning" process on them several months prior to running out of their previous allocations. This is done to try and make the allocations/assignments from those blocks as immediately useful as possible to their customers. I can assure you that RIRs are in the business of distributing IP resources within the policy guidelines set by the community. They have no gain from holding or hoarding them and are not in a position to do any such thing. Owen On Apr 2, 2010, at 3:48 PM, John Palmer (NANOG Acct) wrote:
On the topic of IP4 exhaustion: 1/8, 2/8 and 5/8 have all been assigned in the last 3 months yet I don't see them being allocated out to customers (users) yet.
Is this perhaps a bit of hoarding in advance of the complete depletion of /8's?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Majdi S. Abbas" <msa@latt.net> To: "Jeroen van Aart" <jeroen@mompl.net> Cc: "NANOG list" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 4:06 PM Subject: Re: legacy /8
I am curious. Once we're nearing exhausting all IPv4 space will there ever come a time to ask/demand/force returning all these legacy /8 allocations? I think I understand the difficulty in that, but then running out of IPs is also a difficult issue. :-) For some reason I sooner see all IPv4 space being exhausted than IPv6 being actually implemented globally. Because it's no more than a delaying action. Even presuming you get people to cooperate (and they really, have no incentive to because they don't necessarily have any agreement covering the space with the RIRs) rather than fire up their legal department.... A couple of /8s doesn't last long enough to really make a dent in the pain. You might buy yourself a few months at most. It might actually do more harm than good, by convincing people
On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 02:01:45PM -0700, Jeroen van Aart wrote: that they can still get v4 space rather than worry about what they are going to do in the future. --msa