[ppml] Another question on Policy Proposal 2007-8

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of
>Edward Lewis
>Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 4:56 AM
>To: ppml at arin.net
>Cc: ed.lewis at neustar.biz
>Subject: [ppml] Another question on Policy Proposal 2007-8
>
>
>The discussion on 2007-8 caused me to ask this question of myself:
>
>What if I am looking to buy a company that has address space.  When 
>listing the assets of the company, should the number resources ever 
>be included?  The answer, if the space has come from ARIN (or any 
>RIR) is no.  But what if the resources were obtained pre-RIR?
>

With the continual increase in spammers there are a lot of sites that
are starting to block traffic from pre-RIR assignments that appear to
have no justification for existence or are known spam sources.  I know
of one /24 that a customer of ours had, for example, years ago.  That
customer disconnected from us and their new ISP didn't route their
number block.  So today there is a /24 that is just floating around
out there, it is 199.248.255.0/24 to be specific.  They still have it
and they have not used it in years.  About a year ago I submitted
documentation history to ARIN to try to get this purely for
experimentation sake and they needed a signature from someone at the
owner so I abandonded the attempt.

Lest you think that upstream networks are blocking, think again.  We
acquired an ISP last year connected to cogentco.  I was rather amused
to find that I could advertise any number block I wanted through
cogentco, they do -no- BGP route filtering of any kind, at least not
that I could find.

>Assuming there is a difference between resources obtained from ARIN 
>or before ARIN/RIR, can I tell this from ARIN's whois server?  During 
>the due diligence phase of acquisition I probably should know if the 
>address space comes under ARIN's transfer policy.
>
>Is there anyway to tell if resources fall under an ARIN RSA or under 
>any RIR RSA?  I tried to compare the whois entry for MIT's network 
>(18.0.0.0/8) which I know has been around a while to something that 
>has been more recent but I haven't been able to pull a "direct 
>assignment" from the whois.  (Are "direct assignments" still done?)
>

The above number block I mentioned was a direct assignment, and yes it
is still present in whois.

>The first question is - is there a difference, as far as being 
>"property", of space handed out pre-RIR and from an RIR.  If the 
>difference is "unclear" vs. "not property", I understand.
>
>The second question is - is if there is a difference, how can this be 
>determined from whois?
>

You really can't.  The best thing is to check any convenient Looking
Glass and see if the block is being advertised.  If it is not, and it
is not present in anyones whois or rwhois, it is open season.  Your
greatest difficulty would be finding an upstream feed
willing to advertise it.  If for example you connected to us, there is
no way in hell I would take an advertisement from you for the block
unless it appeared in a numbering authority's whois.  My feeds have
similar policies. But there are plenty of scummier networks out there
who you could pay enough money to and get them advertised.  And if you
are a large transit AS then none of your peers are going to be filtering
anyway.

Ted