On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 8:12 PM Owen DeLong via NANOG <
nanog@nanog.org> wrote:
AFRINIC approves IPv4 for the purpose of leasing every day. It’s what ISPs do. It’s the definition of an LIR.
All of the RIR's do this, yes. Also, yes LIR/ISP allocate space to their customers. That space may never be actually seen
on the ISP/LIR network and may never be seen on the greater Internet...
Yes, most LIRs are also in the connectivity business and provide addresses (mostly/exclusively) to customers of their connectivity services.
If you (royal you) were a datacenter operator and allocated ip space to your customers (machines in racks or vms on machines in racks, etc),
is there a real difference here if the machines/vms never exposed or used their IP addresses outside if the tiny world they inhabit ? (the rack or machine)
The want of unique addressing is not uncommon, the need for this in the face of M&A or other business requirements isn't new.
Yes, these addresses may not be used outside of the datacenter, or the rack or the machine, but they are still accounted for in:
1) the RIR (to the LIR)
2) the LIR (to the customer)
3) the customer (on machine/vm)
It's a resource that the LIR/datacenter operator must account for, and must have capacity planning bits/pieces in place to handle.
I think the discussion about 'with connectivity services' is a bit orthogonal. I also think that if there were such a policy requirement
all RIR and LIR would be in violation of that requirement immediately, so I don't imagine that there's going to be one forthcoming.
However, there’s no such policy requirement in the AFRINIC governing documents.
I don't think you can safely deploy a policy like this Owen (which perhaps you mean here as well).
-chris