[arin-ppml] Ending point to point links as a justification for a /30?

[James Hess]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 2:06 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 8:46 AM, David Divins <dsd at carpathiahost.com> wrote:
[snip> Hi David,
> Got any reasons that neither involve the generation of an ICMP
> destination-unreachable message nor poor-man's circuit-up monitoring
> via echo-request? I'm game to learn something new.

Those reasons may be annoying, but they are still very good reasons.
Use of  echo-request for circuit monitoring and troubleshooting is
also more reliable than other techniques, in certain situations.
It allows the ISP subscriber to get useful traceroute information, and
check their WAN up/down status,  and get some limited idea of
latency/performance, without  being granted access to the ISP's
equipment.

This is particularly relevant if an end user has multiple links
attached to a router, for redundancy.   A simple ping test to upstream
routers will not be able to tell the subscriber that both links  are
fully operational or not,  they  need   numbered  WAN addresses,  to
determine that using ping tests.


ARIN should be careful and judicious and avoid mandating new
technology requirements that could have unforseen negative effects,
or  force organizations into technical problems and expensive upgrades
or process changes,   OR force them into a situation where their
technical requirements  or agreements with their customers cannot be
met  due to IP addressing policy,
unless absolutely necessary, or at least meaningfully  beneficial...


I would be in favor of this  being considered.... if it could
meaningfully delay exhaustion,  or allow a meaningfully larger number
of IP addresses to be allocated in practice.  However,   I don't think
there are enough IP addresses justified as /30s  for point to point
links to put even a small dent  in  IPv4  address consumption.

Does ARIN  have any data that could be provided regarding how many  IP
addresses justified by  members  are  reported  as  /30s  for  point
to point links,   Versus  IP addresses justified for other purposes ?

--
-JH