Question about 'portability'

[Scott Richard Slater]

see below

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Darte" <billd at cait.wustl.edu>
To: "'Alex Kamantauskas'" <alexk at tugger.net>
Cc: <ppml at arin.net>
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 12:44 PM
Subject: RE: Question about 'portability'


> From the ARIN site....
>
> "ARIN is a non-profit organization established for the purpose of
> administration and registration of Internet Protocol (IP) numbers for the
> following geographical areas:
>
>                                    North America,
>                                    South America,
>                                    the Caribbean and
>                                    sub-Saharan Africa."
>
> While ARIN is not oblivious to operational aspects of routing, their
charge
> is not directly impacted by that sensitivity...
> (again from the ARIN site)...
> "ARIN is responsible for maintaining a public trust. Among its
> responsibilities, ARIN promotes the conservation of IP address space,
> maintains impartiality while determining the size of address blocks to be
> allocated or assigned, and supports efforts to keep the global routing
> tables to a manageable size to ensure routability of information over the
> Internet. Continued operation of the Internet depends, in part, upon the
> conservation and efficient use of IP address space."
>
> Bill Darte
> ARIN AC
>

Why did Bill reply to Alex's question/statement with the above excerpt ?
The above excert has no correlation to the question/statement below.

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alex Kamantauskas [mailto:alexk at tugger.net]
> Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 1:37 PM
> To: ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Question about 'portability'
>
>
>
>  This is a fairly simple question, although no one I have approached seems
>  to know the answer.
>
>  Just because ARIN has deemed a network to be 'portable' does not give an
>  end user any rights to the network, correct?  My thinking is that if ARIN
>  has allocated address space to an ISP, and the ISP assigns/allocates a
>  network further downstream, the end user to whom the network has been
>  assigned has no inherent rights to the network just because its portable.
>

ok,  you are almost, ALMOST, exactly correct.

Please read the following excerpt from ARIN's website.
"Almost all end users receive IP address space from their upstream ISPs, not
directly from ARIN. Provider-independent (portable) addresses obtained
directly from ARIN or other regional registries are not guaranteed to be
globally routable. Therefore, end users who wish to receive routable IP
addresses should contact their upstream ISP."

First, let me just clean up your statement above.  ARIN does NOT deem a
network 'portable'.  ARIN deems their IP addresses 'portable'.    Now, when
ARIN delegates IP addresses to an ISP, the IP addresses are 'portable' for
that ISP.  When that ISP delegates IP addresses from their aggregate IP
address delegation from ARIN to an end-user, the IP addresses are not
'portable' for that end-user.  Though, if I was an end-user who could not
obtain IP addresses from ARIN, I would next want to receive IP addresses
from an ISP who receives their IP addresses from ARIN.  You always want to
be at the highest point of the food chain as you can be.  Now, the end-user
may have a few rights.  It all depends on whether the ISP "assigns" or
"allocates" the IP addresses to the end-user.  There is a difference between
the two words.  As we know, when an ISP delegates IP addresses to an
end-user, the ISP then submits a SWIP form to WHOIS & RWHOIS to maintain
accurate records of their IP address space.  Now, normally ISP's "assign" IP
address space from their aggregate block and submit the SWIP form
themselves.  ISP's are able to "allocate" IP address space and allow the
end-user to submit the SWIP forms to ARIN.  This gives an end-user some
rights.  Now, there are advantages and disadvantages with "allocation" of IP
address space.  An advantage is if the end-user needs hundreds of SWIP forms
to be sent "allocation" from the ISP alleviates the ISPs work with
submitting SWIP forms for the end-user.  The disadvantage is if the end-user
changes ISPs, it is a longer process for the ISP with submitting SWIP forms.
Though, most ISPs "assign" IP address space.

What other end-user rights are you referring to ?

> --
> /ak
>