[ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-10: Apply the HD Ratio to All Future IPv4 Allocations

[Charles Scott]

Michael:
  These two comments from you in two separate messages seem to show the
problem. 
  In the first, you're clearly concerned about the efficiency of
utilization by larger end-users. While I won't dispute that this can be the
case at this time (I addressed this a while ago), it doesn't seem to be
related to the percentage of space the provider has assigned. Also, the
the 25/50% policy applies to end user utilization, which I believe is set
that way to be considerate of the complications of end-user address
management. I don't think you mean to say that a large user of address
space can't manage to achieve 50% efficiency, and I don't think it's meant
to mean 50% of the address space is occupied by hosts, only that 50% of
the address space is reasonably utilized in the network.
  In your second comment, you accept that there is confusion about the 
terms, which I think is exemplified by your fist comment. 
  Clearly what's causing trouble here is that there is not only confusion
about the words, but that there is a mix of users and providers, and in
some cases an organization is both a user and a provider. In such a case,
they need to consider themselves as separate entities by "assigning"
themselves space and applying the 25/50% rule to utilization of that space
while considering the entire space so assigned against their 80%
consumption of assignable space. If you do this, it's consistent with ARIN
policy and there should be little difficulty in managing the block of
space ARIN assigned up to at least 80%, and probably well more.
  The way I read the proposal, the HD ratio will apply to the provider's
pool of assignable address space and not to any end-user space.  The
policy for end-user space utilization would remain as-is. However,
RFC-3194 talks about issues of end-user space utilization and not address
assignment. Clearly what's confusing with the proposal is that the terms
are used without qualification and that RFC-3194 complicates matters with
it's use of "...Address ASSIGNMENT Efficiency...".
  I agree with you that if we just shoot the words "allocate", "assign", 
and "utilize" and come up with new definitions of what we mean then we 
might be able to figure out how to interpret 2003-10.

Chuck Scott



On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:

> In a nutshell, organizations managing larger hoards of IP addresses
> cannot maintain the same level of efficiency due to the overhead
> inherent in subnetting a large block into many small fragments. In
> order to not penalize them for losing these "crumbs" of IP space, 
> the usage ratio should be lower for larger hoards of space. The HD
> ratio is a neat and simple calculation that achieves this goal.


On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:

> I agree with you that our terminology is not very precise, mainly
> because we have never clearly defined the terms within our policies. And
> now the meaning of these terms is irretrievably lost because they are
> being used by RIRs in other regions with differing meanings. At this
> point I think we would be better off scrapping the lot of them and using
> something obscure like Section 7 addresses and Section 15 addresses to
> clear up the confusion.