[arin-ppml] Advisory Council Meeting Results - July 2009

[Martin Hannigan]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Owen DeLong<owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> I can try, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong...
>>
>> Up until January 1 2010, ARIN distinguishes between 2-byte and 4-byte
>> ASNs, and lets you have a 2-byte if you need it, but gives out 4-bytes
>> otherwise, to spur adoption.
>>
>> After January 1 2010, ARIN ceases to make any distinction between 2-byte
>> and 4-byte ASNs.  Instead, they simply give out ASNs as they always have,
>> working up from the bottom.  At first, the ASNs given out will be <64k.
>>  Eventually, when that block of ASNs is used up, they'll move on to higher
>> numbers >64k.  Presumably by then everyone with a growing network will have
>> rolled out code to support 4-byte ASNs.
>
> More importantly, by then, it really doesn't matter since there aren't any
> 16-bit ASNs left to give out.


How's that? There is likely some churn. If anything, it significantly
pushes out 4 byte allocations since this seems to imply that as long
as there are 2 byte ASN's they will be allocated.

This is a good candidate for a petition. We lost transparency by the
abandonment and the second interpretation of the intent of the
original policy. It's possible that there are also technical
implications to recycling (if that is the intent) on a rapid basis
some previously utillized ASN's. I admit, I can't really think of
anything significant besides number reputation. That could be enough
though. I'm honestly not sure.

Best,

Martin