I think the real issue here will be this : 1. If you are paying an RIR to maintain the registration it is yours to use unless the terms change to require you to justify usage on a recurring basis. 2. If it is pre-RIR I am not sure how you could change the rules at this point to reclaim an AS number. For example, I am sure the government hold hundreds that they are not using. I am also sure that they were given to them in block form. How would you undo that? I have a little bit of a problem with the "not visible to the Internet as a whole" test. There are a number of valid engineering reasons why an AS might not be visible today but may need to be tomorrow or be dynamically routing or not routing. Maybe you were dual homed and now you temporarily are not. Maybe you are transitioning your architecture to your shiny new IPv6 address space instead of your service provider's space. It would have to be a case by case justification which would hardly be worth the effort. If it was pre-RIR I am not sure how you would establish definitive contacts for old AS numbers. Please don't tell me WHOIS because that is completely inadequate for reclaiming something this significant. I suppose I would not have a problem with you contacting an entity and asking them voluntarily to give up an unused AS number but you better make sure you have the right guy on the phone and I would think there would need to be some kind of incentive for them to do so otherwise your default answer will be no. All in all it is much easier to support larger AS space than to reclaim the oldest foggiest AS numbers. Steven Naslund Chicago IL

-----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Steve Noble Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2018 5:12 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: AS Numbers unused/sitting for long periods of time

Inaccurate whois data from ARIN is not a good way to tell anything as ARIN is terrible to deal with when you need to update an address or phone number or anything. I know personally as I had to fight for years to update the data on >an ASN that ARIN was billing me to manage the data for.

Steve’s situation was relatively unique and arduous. It was also resolved several years ago. Yes, if you have difficulty authenticating as a legitimate administrator of the resource, it can be difficult to convince ARIN you should be updating the contact data on said resource. Hopefully everyone here can see how that is a desirable thing. I’m quite glad that ARIN makes it difficult for people who aren’t me to update my resource records. As to the issue raised regarding unused ASNs, there are several possibilities not yet considered IMHO: 1. There were private networks built before private ASNs existed. 2. There were private networks built that needed ASN coordination and include more ASNs than there were private 16-bit ASNs. 3. While private ASNs may be a solution for some private networks, there are other cases where they may not be well suited. Such cases can legitimately use public ASNs. 4. NO single view, nor even any collection of views available to any one entity can be considered a complete routing table for the entire internet. Are there ASNs that were issued prior to the creation of ARIN that may languish? Yes. Probably a few thousand. All ASNs issued since the creation of ARIN come with an annual fee being paid to ARIN which means that the ASN isn’t languishing unless someone is paying the fee for the ASN and/or related resources each year. So in the case of companies that no longer exist, if you report your suspicions to ARIN, they’ll investigate and reclaim the ASNs if they can be certain that the organizations are no longer valid. In the case of ASNs issued in the last 20 years, that’s as easy as checking that the invoice got paid by someone. ASNs issued prior to 1997 are a much harder problem to solve. Personally, I don’t think there’s enough value to the community in a few thousand ASNs to make it worth the cost involved in ARIN going out and reclaiming them aggressively. A few years ago, we added 4,294,901,760 ASNs to the original pool of 65,536 ASNs. (This includes both public and private in both cases). None of those 4 billion new ASNs will languish as they are all issued under an annual fee. As such, I see little or no value in trying to reclaim the few thousand ASNs that might be subject to such a policy. Owen

On Jan 3, 2018, at 07:12 , Mike Hammett <nanog@ics-il.net> wrote:

I updated all applicable records for a new client in the past month. Didn't seem that difficult. *shrugs*

I did have control of the email server for the domain in the POCs, though.

----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com

Midwest-IX http://www.midwest-ix.com

----- Original Message -----

From: "Steve Noble" <snoble@sonn.com> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Tuesday, January 2, 2018 5:11:57 PM Subject: Re: AS Numbers unused/sitting for long periods of time

Inaccurate whois data from ARIN is not a good way to tell anything as ARIN is terrible to deal with when you need to update an address or phone number or anything. I know personally as I had to fight for years to update the data on an ASN that ARIN was billing me to manage the data for.

...

Chris Adams <mailto:cma@cmadams.net> January 2, 2018 at 2:56 PM

I know of two (from a former job) that pre-date ARIN that haven't been used since 1999 because those two companies no longer exist (nor AFAIK does any successor company). The whois information is bogus at this point, but I couldn't prove that.

I expect that AS numbers allocated by ARIN and other current RIRs are not abandoned like that (since they charge annual fees, and I assume they reclaim for non-payment), so the number of abandoned AS numbers is probably not growing significantly (and would not grow beyond the pre-RIR pool).

With 32 bit AS numbers though, what's the point of making an effort to reclaim the old AS numbers? BGP4 has been shown to handle alternate length AS numbers, so if somehow 4 billion are allocated, it probably won't be a big deal to extend BGP again.

James Breeden <mailto:James@arenalgroup.co> January 2, 2018 at 2:46 PM Before I take this to the ARIN PPML, wanted to get NANOG's thoughts.

I'm amazed at the number of AS numbers that are assigned, but not actively being used. I'm not talking just like they are offline for a week or month, this is complete non-use of the AS in the global routing table within *years*. They are completely abandoned resources - Whois data is inaccurate by 5-10 years, no routeviews data in the same time period, the owning organization (if you can find it) scratches their heads about responding whether they use it or not, etc.

I know we're currently not in a push to get AS numbers or close to exhaustion, but I do believe that people who have global AS numbers should have a requirement to use them or return them to the global pool. Am I the only one thinking this?

And before you come back with "Well they may be using it internally where it doesn't need to be in the GRT" - that's why we have Private AS numbers.

I.e. some form of ARIN or global policy that basically says "If AS number not routed or whois updated or used in 24 months, said AS number can be public noticed via mailing list and website and then revoked and reissued to a pending, approved AS request"

Just thinking aloud. Happy New Year all!

James W. Breeden

Managing Partner

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Arenal Group: Arenal Consulting Group | Acilis Telecom | Pines Media

PO Box 1063 | Smithville, TX 78957

Email: james@arenalgroup.co<mailto:james@arenalgroup.co> | office 512.360.0000 | cell 512.304.0745 | www.arenalgroup.co<http://www.arenalgroup.co/>

On Jan 2, 2018, at 19:10 , Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:

if AS numbers are unused, what operational difference does it make?

but if you have the gloves and long forceps needed to deal with the rir policy <bleep>, then there is a real need for inter-region AS transfer.

randy

Why? Seriously asking, not trying to be confrontational. I understand some people want it, but I’m trying to understand the actual “need” vs. want. Owen

On 03/01/18 03:40, Christopher Morrow wrote:

On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 5:46 PM, James Breeden <James@arenalgroup.co> wrote:

...

I'm amazed at the number of AS numbers that are assigned, but not actively being used.

'not actuvely being used' ... how would you (or anyone) know? what if they were used only on some internal part of a large public network which never leaked beyond their borders/uses? What if the ASN is used on a large private network? (for instance.. where I know of several such things).

I'd second those views. Just take IXPs as an example. Their AS does not necessarily get redistributed past the ISPs peering on these. Not only that, but smaller ones often have non-routable IPv4 allocations, like a /26. So saying, that an ASN is unused is never very accurate, when you don't have the full picture. And the global routing table certainly isn't the full picture. Kind regards, Martin List-Petersen -- Airwire Ltd. - Ag Nascadh Pobail an Iarthair http://www.airwire.ie Phone: 091-865 968 Registered Office: Moy, Kinvara, Co. Galway, 091-865 968 - Registered in Ireland No. 508961