[ppml] ARIN Policy Proposal 2002-9

[Alec H. Peterson]

--On Tuesday, October 1, 2002 14:19 -0400 Beran <beran at beranpeter.com> 
wrote:

>
> Equal access to ip space is VERY important to the Internet community at
> large. This should be a TOP priority!

There are other priorities at work.  If ARIN allocates a /24 to anybody who 
asks for one, there will be a massive land grab.  The supply we have now 
will seem even smaller than it is now, and routing table size will get 
completely out of control.

>
> It is clear now that we have had a number of years of operation in the
> current format to understand that IP space is still being improperly
> utilized/horded/charged for etc.
> Why not allow /24 address space allocations?

I don't quite follow how relaxing our allocation policy will change the 
issues you percieve with hoarding and utilization.

> I see and have heard NO good reasons not to allow it. The same process and
> the same requirements for a /20 address space works well now so why not
> for /24.

For exactly the same reasons that the InterNIC decided to only allocate /19 
and shorter blocks in the mid 90s.  Because address space is a very limited 
resource.  I encourage you to look at the discussions on the PAGAN, CIDRD 
and NANOG lists that took place when these policies were first introduced. 
Back then, at the rate of consumption that we saw address space was not 
going to last more than a few more years.

There are many more things that we need to consider.  The fact that some 
small businesses claim they are being gouged by their service providers is 
unfortunate, but it is not an issue that ARIN can or should address.  In 
the mid 90s there were extremely good reasons to put restrictions on who 
can get address space.  Having ARIN only allocate large blocks of address 
space (/20) accomplishes a lot.  Even though multi-homed customers are 
sometimes announcing their PA space as a more specific, that address space 
is still aggregatable.  So a service provider can make a decision to only 
accept /20 and shorter announcements in ARIN-allocated address space and 
can still reach the entire Internet.  Were ARIN to begin allocating /24s 
this would no longer be possible.

> ARIN IS doing a good job. Great people, great service, and responsive.
> ISP's on average have not been any of these. And to charge EVERY month for
> EVERY ip used which was essentially free to obtain for anyone to justify a
> couple years ago is terrible.

If you are unhappy with what your service provider is charging you, I 
suggest you complain to your service provider or find a new one.  Service 
providers have real costs associated with the services that they provide. 
How they charge for them is their business, and if they charge too much 
then open market forces will correct it.  Do you complain to your 
provider's upstream provider when they charge you too much for the 
bandwidth you are purchasing?  Do you complain to the VeriSign Registry 
when your registrar charges you too much for a domain name?

Alec

--
Alec H. Peterson -- ahp at hilander.com
Chief Technology Officer
Catbird Networks, http://www.catbird.com