[ppml] Allocation and reallocation

[Romary, Jim]

Greetings. After a looooong haitus I am back to managing address 
space for a company I work for. For now, at least. I am Jim Romary, 
and I used to be {host|post|news|*}master for SuperNet, a regional ISP
that got
bought at the end of 1997. Among my functions was address acquisition 
and management pre-ARIN. 

I would like to weigh in with my understanding of the two terms. I don't

feel that appeals to Merriam Webster or any other source will produce 
much clarity on this issue, BTW. As in Scrabble, we need to agree on
an authority before we start playing that game. 

My understanding has always been the one recently espoused by Cathy,
which 
is actually less a definition than a statement of some characteristics:

Allocations can be broken up into assignments and given to customers,
but assignments can not be further delegated to other organizations, 
or customers.  

This has been even more succinctly stated by Owen, below. 

Allocations are addresses that should ALWAYS be returned by Assignees
upon 
the latter's seeking a new provider, its demise by bankruptcy, its
swallowing 
by another company with its own allocations, or any other event that
would 
cause the assignee to either go off-net or be topologically different
enough 
(network-wise) to get a new provider. Theoretically, companies that need

assignments come and go, seek new providers with cheaper fares, merge,
go 
off-shore, etc. They are and should be more mobile than Registeries. 
Allocatations to Registries can only be further assigned. Level of
"ownership" 
and control devolves downward as the distance from uber registry, ICANN,

increases. 

Allocations went to RIRs. Assignments went from the Regionals and
Providers 
to their customers. Customers always returned their assignments when
they 
sought a new Provider. I never "allocated" addresses to customers, and
for 
this reason, we never charged for use of address space. The terms
"allocation" 
and "ownership" were too entwined. 

Jim Romary

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ppml at arin.net [mailto:owner-ppml at arin.net] On Behalf Of Owen
DeLong
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 10:36 PM
To: Michael.Dillon at radianz.com
Cc: ppml at arin.net
Subject: Re: [ppml] Allocation and reallocation


You came close to correct here Michael, but, you are backwards...

RIRs ALLOCATE to LIRs and both RIR and LIR can ASSIGN to end users.

Owen


--On Friday, October 24, 2003 02:01:39 AM +0100
Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:

>> That is, RIRs ALLOCATE to LIRs.  End users,
>> on the other hand, receive ASSIGNMENTS from LIRs or RIRs.
>
> An important point. There are two types of organizations, LIRs and
> end users. RIRs assign to LIRs but end users can receive their
> allocation from either LIRs (the normal case) or RIRs.
>
> --Michael Dillon
>
>