[ppml] ":" - Re: Proposed Policy: 4-Byte AS Number Policy Proposal

[Geoff Huston]

At 09:45 PM 13/12/2005, Daniel Roesen wrote:
>On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 04:35:05PM -0500, Edward Lewis wrote:
> > The syntax "a:b" does not appear in that document.  Is it defined
> > elsewhere?  The use of the ":" as separator bothers me as that is
> > used in IPv6 address notation.
>
>And in community syntax, for both standard communities and extended
>communities (which become very very ugly with this notation).
>
>But you are right, probably not the place to discuss that, although
>this document text would set a precedence.

I will revise the proposal with a '.' rather than a ':' delimiter.

>A question to Geoff: why will issueing of 4-byte ASNs start only at
>2007-01-01, not earlier? To give RIRs two(!) years time to prepare
>themselves from 32bit ASN?

1 January 2007 is some 12 1/2 months away. Given that, it will take some 
months of elapsed time for:

- the policy proposal to make it through the RIR and get adopted as RIR policy

- the 4-byte draft to get far enough through the IETF's Proposed Standard 
process to initiate the IANA action on the registry (already, more than 1 
month after the publication request was made by the IDR Working Grop chairs 
in the IETF  (12th November) , the document status in the document tracker 
says "I-D Exists" rather than "publication requested" - this is not exactly 
being fast tracked)

- the IANA action to actually create the expanded registry (a small task in 
and of itself, but it often takes some time to get to the top of the IANA 
work list)

- the IANA action to allocate 5 blocks to the RIRs from the 4-byte only AS 
Number pool

- The RIR to check that there are no 16 bit restrictions ion the code base 
they are using in their registry code.

- The RIR to prepare documentation and implement procedures in the AS 
allocation framework that will permit an applicant to request a 4-byte AS 
number

Doubtless each of these tasks is minor in nature, but it's prudent to allow 
a 12 month period in order to ensure that all this can be done without 
having to rush it through..

thanks,

   Geoff