[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: Extend 16 bit ASN Assignments

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Leo Vegoda [mailto:leo.vegoda at icann.org] 
> Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 9:34 AM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt; Robert E. Seastrom; Aaron Hughes
> Cc: arin-ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: Extend 16 bit ASN 
> Assignments
> 
> On 08/05/2009 4:42, "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at ipinc.net> wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > At this point all the major router vendors have corrected their ASN 
> > handling code so that 4 byte AS numbers are not a problem 
> unless you 
> > want to use one yourself.
> 
> At last week's RIPE meeting, Daniel Karrenberg presented a 
> statistical breakdown of the reasons given when 32-bit ASNs 
> are returned to the RIPE NCC. It was interesting to see that 
> in over 40% of cases the reason(s) given related to the 
> ability of a 3rd party network to cope with big AS Numbers.
> See slide 4:
> 
> http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-58/presentations/upload
> s//presentatio
> ns/Wednesday/Address%20Policy%20WG/Karrenberg-ASN32-take-up-re
> port.FFBG.pdf
> 
> Using the number yourself seems not to be as simple as we had hoped.
> 

I guess what I think is if your paying an upstream provider for
connectivity that if your going to use a 32-bit ASN that they
damn well better support it, there's plenty of other upstream
providers out there.  That 22% figure is surprising.

What is good to read, though, is that 73% of the requests were
for 2-byte ASNs from the start, which means that the majority of
admins requesting them ARE cognisant of the differences, and
are simply making the economically smart choice of selecting
a 2 byte ASN because it's available, rather than replacing/updating
hardware.

So I don't think more education here is going to help, much.

This is just one of those things that is going to happen exactly
like what happens when a community rations gasoline because it's
in short supply.  The people with a lot of money buy fuel-sipping
cars and the fuel shortage is a mere inconvenience to them.  The poor
people end up doing a lot less driving of their gas-hogs and
suffer a lot of disruption in their lives as a result.

Ted