Re: Allocation of IP Addresses
Yes, well there is no other way of doing it. The days of starting a ISP out of your house and in a few years be a Sprint is falling away. ISP's will just need to get space from there upstream provider and renumber.
How many times is it reasonable to ask a customer to renumber? Once is certainly reasonable. Twice is questionable. More than that and I would suspect the customer would renumber all right, but as part of shifting to a different ISP.
As many as it takes, This is just something you are going to need to deal with. We started with small blocks and had to renumber several times so far. It is just part of growing, until you are a large NSP connected to all the NAPs you will just need to start will small blocks and renumber over and over until you get /18 or smaller.
This strikes me as being discriminatory against the smaller ISPs. The customers are looking for stability and, from their point of view, being forced to renumber several times along with the ISP is unstable and costly. They'll look to ISPs who will not force them to renumber, the ones with a /18 or smaller already. Do you truly believe there is no way to avoid the forced renumbering problem for the smaller ISPs? -David
On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, David C. Kovar wrote:
This strikes me as being discriminatory against the smaller ISPs. The customers are looking for stability and, from their point of view, being forced to renumber several times along with the ISP is unstable and costly. They'll look to ISPs who will not force them to renumber, the ones with a /18 or smaller already.
There always will be disadvantages of being small. This is true in every market.
Do you truly believe there is no way to avoid the forced renumbering problem for the smaller ISPs?
There is no way to avoid renumbering. Every other plausible proposal I've seen have been renumbering under a different guise. -dorian
Dorian:
There is no way to avoid renumbering. Every other plausible proposal I've seen have been renumbering under a different guise.
Yes, correct. But the open issue is where in the hier' is the Best Place to renumber: (1) End users; or (2) Intermediate systems (i.e. translation or encapsulation). There is quite a big differnet technosophically in the approach between (1) and (2). High Regards, Tim postscript: also, as engineers, we should not encourage an approach, IMO, that further puts small businesses at a disadvantage ... namely (1). -- +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tim Bass | | | Principal Network Systems Engineer | "... images are the literature | | The Silk Road Group, Ltd. | of the layman." | | | | | http://www.silkroad.com/ | Umberto Eco | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Who in bloody blazes decided, yet again, that this "allocation of IP addresses" thread was important enough that everyone on com-priv _and_ nanog ought to see it? Is anybody besides me getting tired of hearing about the sky falling? Find someplace that this thing belongs, and beat it to death in that one spot. Don't subject every mailing list you can think of to every issue that concerns you. Not everyone on every list shares your every concern. Grumble. I wish I could make myself send 100 copies of this grumpy message to both lists, so that you would all know what 100 pieces of "pure noise that we've all seen before" looks like, up close and personal. (Don't worry.)
On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, David C. Kovar wrote:
How many times is it reasonable to ask a customer to renumber? Once is certainly reasonable. Twice is questionable. More than that and I would suspect the customer would renumber all right, but as part of shifting to a different ISP.
As many as it takes, This is just something you are going to need to deal with. We started with small blocks and had to renumber several times so far. It is just part of growing, until you are a large NSP connected to all the NAPs you will just need to start will small blocks and renumber over and over until you get /18 or smaller.
This strikes me as being discriminatory against the smaller ISPs. The customers are looking for stability and, from their point of view, being forced to renumber several times along with the ISP is unstable and costly. They'll look to ISPs who will not force them to renumber, the ones with a /18 or smaller already.
Do you truly believe there is no way to avoid the forced renumbering problem for the smaller ISPs?
Look, I know what it is like to be a small ISP, I am still one. I started my company as a high school project with my Dad's credit card. I think a lot of ISP get into this thinking it is a easy way to make big bucks. You you can, but it is hard, and you will need to renumber several times. They need to just live with it, or get 10 mill and get the NIC to give you a /18. Nathan Stratton CEO, NetRail, Inc. Your Gateway to the World! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phone (703)524-4800 NetRail, Inc. Fax (703)534-5033 2007 N. 15 St. Suite 5 Email sales@netrail.net Arlington, Va. 22201 WWW http://www.netrail.net/ Access: (703) 524-4802 guest --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34
As many as it takes, This is just something you are going to need to deal with. We started with small blocks and had to renumber several times so far. It is just part of growing, until you are a large NSP connected to all the NAPs you will just need to start will small blocks and renumber over and over until you get /18 or smaller.
This strikes me as being discriminatory against the smaller ISPs. The customers are looking for stability and, from their point of view, being forced to renumber several times along with the ISP is unstable and costly. They'll look to ISPs who will not force them to renumber, the ones with a /18 or smaller already.
Do you truly believe there is no way to avoid the forced renumbering problem for the smaller ISPs?
-David [Kovar]
If the ISP is stupid, then yes, they will be in a bad position. If they are smarter than their competition, they will help their customers bring up their networks intelligently such that there are as few static addresses used as possible, and the rest is all DHCP magic. They will work with their customers to find easier ways to renumber networks, and in turn, those larger customers will bang on their product vendors to better support dynamic addressing needs. It's not difficult to do, it just takes an understanding of what's going on out there, and a committment to follow through. Dave -- Dave Siegel Sr. Network Engineer, RTD Systems & Networking (520)623-9663 Network Consultant -- Regional/National NSPs dsiegel@rtd.com User Tracking & Acctg -- "Written by an ISP, http://www.rtd.com/~dsiegel/ for an ISP."
Yes, well there is no other way of doing it. The days of starting a ISP out of your house and in a few years be a Sprint is falling away. ISP's will just need to get space from there upstream provider and renumber.
Yes
How many times is it reasonable to ask a customer to renumber? Once is certainly reasonable. Twice is questionable. More than that and I would suspect the customer would renumber all right, but as part of shifting to a different ISP.
Please tell me how this could happen? I would call this poor planning on the part of the ISP. Simply request network space from your provider until you can justify say a /18-16...(if you get a /18, request that the rest of the /16 is reserved for you and BACK IT UP with documentation) by noting that you will return ALL of your provider assigned networks within X amount of time of recieving the delegation from the NIC. This is 1 renumbering. (Not including switching providers if you so choose...a cost of doing business that you must accept if it's your choice..although I'll stick my neck out and say this should happen early when it is least painful...you can usually tell if you want to leave an provider early on) Any NSP that cannot allocate to you at least a /19 worth of networks (IF YOU CAN JUSTIFY IT) is not worth using for an ISP who thinks they need globally routable address space that they can advertise wherever they want sometime in the near future. If you aren't going to get to that point...what's the damn problem?
As many as it takes, This is just something you are going to need to deal with. We started with small blocks and had to renumber several times so far. It is just part of growing, until you are a large NSP connected to all the NAPs you will just need to start will small blocks and renumber over and over until you get /18 or smaller.
Granted...back then...renumbering wasn't something you thought about... you just had the provider release a network if you left...but nowdays, if you plan for it, it'll be less painful...what a concept.
This strikes me as being discriminatory against the smaller ISPs. The customers are looking for stability and, from their point of view, being forced to renumber several times along with the ISP is unstable and costly. They'll look to ISPs who will not force them to renumber, the ones with a /18 or smaller already.
See above...if your customers know how to make it easier, it will be easier. rfc1918, proxie firewalls, NAT gateways, DHCP, dynamic ppp, etc. I maintain that the word several is unlikely (based on an ISP starting up now and actually planning...perhaps an overzealous assumption)
Do you truly believe there is no way to avoid the forced renumbering problem for the smaller ISPs?
-David
There is an alternative to forced renumbering. Do it voluntarily at your time based on the schedule of your planning. Then it's not a problem...it's a fact of doing business that you are taking control of. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Smith ** awsmith@neosoft.com ** Network Operations ** (713) 968-5800 ** "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" - Alan Kay ** ** http://www.neosoft.com/neosoft/staff/andrew ** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any NSP that cannot allocate to you at least a /19 worth of networks (IF YOU CAN JUSTIFY IT) is not worth using for an ISP who thinks they need globally routable address space that they can advertise wherever they want sometime in the near future. If you aren't going to get to that point...what's the damn problem?
Except that if you give out /19s to newer ISPs with no allocation/use track record, then the NIC may say "Sorry, you can't get more address space, you haven't been efficiently using what you were given." Avi
Any NSP that cannot allocate to you at least a /19 worth of networks (IF YOU CAN JUSTIFY IT) is not worth using for an ISP who thinks they need globally routable address space that they can advertise wherever they want sometime in the near future. If you aren't going to get to that point...what's the damn problem?
Except that if you give out /19s to newer ISPs with no allocation/use track record, then the NIC may say "Sorry, you can't get more address space, you haven't been efficiently using what you were given."
Avi
clarification...this is over time...as opposed to an ISP who would say "we can't give you any more...go to the NIC" Most larger ISP's can even reserve a contiguous block for you...and just delegate parts at a time... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Smith ** awsmith@neosoft.com ** Network Operations ** (713) 968-5800 ** "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" - Alan Kay ** ** http://www.neosoft.com/neosoft/staff/andrew ** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
clarification...this is over time...as opposed to an ISP who would say "we can't give you any more...go to the NIC" Most larger ISP's can even reserve a contiguous block for you...and just delegate parts at a time...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Smith ** awsmith@neosoft.com ** Network Operations ** (713) 968-5800 ** "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" - Alan Kay ** ** http://www.neosoft.com/neosoft/staff/andrew ** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even so, you may run into trouble when you need your next block of IP space if the NIC doesn't agree with your allocation policies. And if you give out a /24, /23, or /22 to a new ISP but reserve a /19 for them, you will have under-utilized your old space by the current interpretations used by the NIC, I believe. Hey, I don't make the rules. Neither does Kim, but she does interpret them. I would love to know if the NIC is allowing as reasonable reserved allocations of /19s (of course, /19s won't get past the Sprint route import filters) for new or even semi-new and expanding ISPs. "NIC is allowing as reasonable" == when looking at your %age of space in your total existing allocations that isn't used, an "acceptable" explanation is that you've reserved it for growth by a set of people. Avi
Lets take this sample situation (which happens all the time). Fledgling ISP A wants a block of address space, ISP A goes to the NIC directly. The NIC says go to your upstream NSP B. NSP B is a regional and is ready to give out a /19, but ISP A doesn't want to be tied down to a particular NSP. Time goes by. ISP A goes to the NIC again and makes an embelished case to the NIC (thinking that the NIC will give ISP A a /19). Instead the NIC give ISP A a /20. ISP A doesn't have a clue about Sprint's filters (or anyone elses filters). NSP B informs ISP A that the /20 is too long of a prefix to pass through Sprint's filters. ISP A cires bloody murder, and appeals to the NIC asking for the next /20 contiguous to the first one and the NIC says no way. Finally ISP A gets a /19 from NSP B and HAS to renumber. At this point ISP A has renumbered three times (first from a /24, then from a NIC assigned /20, and then finially to a NSP assigned /19). ISP A is still clueless and doesn't even send in the SWIP updates for the block from NSP B. ISP A exhausts the /19 due to inefficient address space utilization and asks for another /19. NSP B says, I see no SWIPs for your block, as far as I can tell you havn't even used it yet. So why did ISP A want NIC assigned address space in the first place? Because, he didn't want to have to renumber anymore after getting it. That way he could go to any NSP and be routed and not have to re-number all his customers. So it all boils down to not wanting to ever have to re-number. Maybe ISP A should talk to the people at pier :-). But seriously, renumbering is more of a preceived problem than it actually is. The ISP's customers would have to renumber if they switched ISPs anyways, so if they are truly happy with the ISP, then they have no reason to leave. Lets face it, if you are starting out you may have to renumber several times if you are trying to get NIC assigned address space. If you get provider assigned address space you will have to renumber if you change providers. The next problem is if you want to be multi-homed (through different NSPs) you will want NIC assigned address space. So lets apply this to the case of the small ISP, * a small ISP shouldn't be concerned about being multi-homed. There are much bigger issues than wasting money and time to become multi-homed. * when the ISP is ready to become multi-homed then it will be big enough to justify large blocks and will have to renumber. * Maybe the problem is reliabilty of the primary link, (say his NSP has major outages all the time), then the ISP made a bad business decision. The ISP should find a reliable provider and renumber. So, if you are a startup ISP and grow and want to become multi-homed you will renumber. It all boils down to renumbering, its a fact of life for a startup ISP. Enough about startup ISPs, what about the case of the corporation that wants/needs to be multi-homed. The easiest way is to just get multiple connections to the same national backbone. This may not be possible in all cases, so you have to get NIC assigned address space, so you have to renumber. Renumbering is a fact of life, so live with it and find ways to do it better and more efficiently. Scott -- smace@neosoft.com - KC5NUA - Scott Mace - Network Engineer - Neosoft Inc. Any opinions expressed are mine.
participants (9)
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Andrew Smith -
Avi Freedman -
Dave Siegel -
David C. Kovar -
Dorian Kim -
Nathan Stratton -
Paul A Vixie -
Scott Mace -
Tim Bass