[ppml] Policy Proposal 2002-3: Micro-Assignments forMultihomed Networks

[Jeff S Wheeler]

On Fri, 2003-08-22 at 10:54, Eric Van Tol wrote:
> With this reasoning, I suppose it would be okay to go out and steal cars
> because some people find it too difficult to purchase a car on their
> own, or lack the finances to purchase one.

Unfortunately in this case, a majority of the people using "hijacked" IP
address space are doing so because they are too small to legitimately
obtain assignments from the ARIN.

Using your analogy, it is impossible for many people to buy cars. Those
people need one to get to work. Oh, and don't forget to mention, there
are thousands upon thousands of abandoned cars, which no one will miss,
and which are are in fine working order, on the side of the road. The
only thing wrong with them is that they aren't registered to you (yet).

I think you fail to understand that a large majority of the "hijackers"
William has identified have not done so because they want to avoid being
accountable. Those who want to avoid accountability are abusing the BGP
system, advertising and withdrawing routes periodically without any ARIN
(or other registry) being involved at all. True, William has discovered
some groups who churn through blocks, and that is deplorable, however a
change in assignment policy is certainly not going to prevent that.

What you CAN do is remove the need for folks to "hijack" space, use
out-of-region registrars, and so on.

I have gone to a great deal of trouble to explain the motivation of
"hijackers", and given my easily implementable suggestion on how to
eliminate that problem: make the ARIN easier to work with. Reduce
minimum allocation sizes such that any small organization which needs PI
space, can get PI space. I think most people would agree that the IPv4
space would not be exhausted by letting BGP-speakers with ARIN ASNs get
/24 (or larger) CIDR assignments. As those organizations grow I think it
is reasonable to issue them a second similar assignment of whatever size
they can justify, and presumably if the need a third they can renumber
from one or simply apply for a /20, etc. This implementation would not
substantially increase route table growth (since these small orgs are
announcing Provider Assigned space today), and defines a clear path for
the small orgs to grow into the more familar ARIN PI assignment policy.

--
Jeff S Wheeler