[arin-ppml] IPv6 /32 minimum for extra-small ISP

[William Herrin]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
>> IIRC, the phrase used was "everyone else's BGP router," where "BGP
>> router" is slightly sloppy but commonly understood shorthand for a
>> member of the specific set of routers we're concerned with - those
>> which carry all the routes announced into the public Internet via
>> eBGP.
>
> Regards to you for clarifying. Assumptions about what is "commonly
> understood" only go so far when one is dealing with global public
> policy and an expanding base of constituents and participants.
> I think it's good for everyone involved when these forms of
> "shorthand", whether they are only "slightly" or "very" sloppy, are
> probed and made more explicit.

Hi Milton,

I find that clarifying a bit of jargon is often a welcome activity,
particularly if the jargon is confusing. The difference between
"allocation" and "assignment," for example, trips up almost everybody
at least once.

On the other hand, arguing for the banishment of jargon in a
discussion between knowledge domain experts is generally less than
effective -- it's too often impossible for the writer to determine
ahead of time just when two words of jargon would be helpfully
replaced with a dozen paragraphs of explanation with which the person
to whom he's directly responding is likely already familiar.

Nor is precision always helpful. We have at least three distinct
definitions floating around here as to exactly which "BGP routers" are
relevant. In each version, though, there are a large number of such
routers, they're owned by many organizations and collectively they
cost a ferocious amount of money.

There was no need to reopen that tired debate. Only the generality was
important to Ted's reminder that when providing ARIN allocations to
ISPs that find $2250/year challenging, "you consume the same amount of
routing resources on everyone else's BGP router on the Internet,"
regardless of the range of each address block announcement.

Regards,
Bill




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William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
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