[ppml] Policy Proposal 2005-9: 4-Byte AS Number

[Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com]

> Now the policy, as written, had a definition of "4-Byte only AS Numbers" 
in 
> the terminology section, and I suspect that this definition is adequate 
in 
> terms of equating this phrase with the concept of numbers with non-zero 
> high order bits.

This is the type of language that I am attacking when
I suggested that the policy proposal needs a complete
rewrite to put into PLAIN ENGLISH.

Convoluted language may be acceptable in academic papers
but it has no place in ARIN's policies!

As far as I can see, there is no such thing as a 4-byte
AS number and therefore no such thing as a 4-byte only 
AS number. All the AS numbers that I have ever seen have
been simple decimal numbers, positive integers if you want
a more technical definition. If the BGP protocol needs to
allocate some number of bytes to transmit the number, then
that is an implementation issue, not a policy issue.

On the policy level I see that we are lifting the maximum
AS number beyond the 65535 that is the current maximum.
As far as policy is concerned, I don't see what bytes
have to do with this at all.

If people want to talk about bytes, I suggest that they
should join the IETF list or the BGP implementors list.

--Michael Dillon