[ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of
>Kevin Loch
>Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 10:36 PM
>To: ppml at arin.net
>Subject: Re: [ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown
>
>
>Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
>> It is quite obvious, for example, that having something like
>131.107.0.0/16
>> assigned to Microsoft makes it quite easy for Microsoft's
>administrators to
>> have this giant worlwide WAN that runs BGP internally and has many
>> interconnection
>> points to the world.  Very good.  Then how come Looking Glass only shows
>> MS's AS's  (3598, and 8068-8075) interconnected to the rest of us
>> via Level 3?
>
>What looking glass are you using to arrive at this conclusion?
>

This was an example to drive home a point.  One that you apparently
missed.  It was not at all an intent to deeply analyze Microsoft
but merely to point out some giant holes that were illustrated by
an obvious real world example.

>Microsoft peers with lots of networks (especially via 8075).
>They do appear to use 3356 transit for certain prefixes but
>that may not be out of necessity, and even those prefixes are seen
>by many peers directly.
>
>They also have much more than just a single /16.

Yes, I know.

>Much of it is
>assignments made by ARIN under modern policies (including
>justification requirements).

Ah, yes.  Now, please explain how exactly ARIN continues to make
sure that these requirements are met?

We got space allocated from ARIN a number of years ago.  Never once
since then have we ever gotten a phone call from ARIN asking to
re-up our justification.  Nor has anyone that I have ever heard
with space allocated.  As long as you pay your bill every year
they don't talk to you.

Perhaps one part of a "address reclamation" proposal might be that
the number registries are required to contact the address holders once
a year and get a new justification.  Of course, admins at those comapnies
could lie like dogs in filling out the justification requests - but
at LEAST someone would be requiring them to lie like dogs!  Right now
they aren't even doing that!!

I mean seriously - people are asking questions ON THIS LIST like
"hypothetically if a company is sold, is it's /whatever worth anything?"

Translation: this non-functional company that we just bought and are
about to eviscerate has gobs of allocated addresses they aren't going to
be needing anytime soon - can we sell them to some bozo and make a lot
of money?

>They may ask for additional space in the
>future.  I have no doubts that their space is efficiently utilized.
>

And there be the problem.  From the Internet's point of view, if a company
like MS gets a /19 allocated and puts it ENTIRELY behind it's own firewalls,
with no access in to those addresses from the outside, then what use is that
to the Internet?  Not a damn bit.

It is like, well Microsoft just setup a training center in Los Angeles
so we are going to sell them Interstate 5 so their employees can drive
back and forth without being bothered by congestion.

You need to read up on what ARIN is telling people.  They are out there
telling some pea-ant webhoster that they are expecting that the webhoster
is going to stick his 500 customers on a virtual server - behind a single
IP addresss - to promote efficient IP utilization.  And then you are saying
that it's OK to just hand out swaths of /20's willy-nilly just to make
someone's
internal network a bit easier to manage?

If a situation develops in 5 years where ARIN is telling people they cannot
allocate any IPv4 space, while at the same time you have large organizations
like Microsoft sitting on hundreds of thousands of IPv4 numbers that are
unreachable from a traceroute on the public Internet, I forsee a huge
political outcry that will basically destroy ARIN's authority to allocate
numbers.

But, I suppose you want that.  If not, then use your head to think about
the points I made.

Ted