[ppml] ppml 2002-7

[Alec H. Peterson]

--On Tuesday, February 11, 2003 9:50 -0700 Steve Rolapp 
<steve at rovingplanet.com> wrote:

>
> There is little credible engineering reason to deny allowing an
> organization to own a small public block.  I have not seen any research
> done that would suggest that doing this would impact routing table size.

The routing table size isn't really the main argument against this.  It's 
the _structure_ of the routing table, in terms of ability to aggregate.

Right now, ARIN only allocates /20 and longer blocks.  This means that 
service providers could filter routes they receive on this boundary (in 
ARIN blocks anyway) to help control the size of the routing table in their 
network.  If ARIN allocates longer blocks, this ties the hands of service 
providers.

>
> While the provider that gives a block to an organization can aggregate
> the announcement from its network, that is not the case with the other
> provider(s) that the site is connected to. Thus outside the connecting
> providers, the table has grown when the site goes live.  What is the
> difference if the block was sold by one provider or ARIN?

The blocks are not 'sold'.  And see above for the difference.

Alec

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