[arin-ppml] ARIN Multiple Discrete Networks Policy

[John Curran]

On Oct 2, 2011, at 5:12 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

> I was specifically referencing something John said earlier, but ok lets 
> assume for the moment that your statement is entirely true (as I'm not 
> particularly interested in trying to figure out the specific effects 
> that ARIN strives for, just in how to get them to stop making excuses 
> for not honoring the policy as written :P).

Richard - 

ARIN implements the policy as written, but it is true that the
implementation does not match your desired use of the policy. 

You have said: 

    "The problem is that ARIN doesn't believe "promoting 
     routing aggregation on the Internet" is a stated goal
     of this policy,"

    "At the end of the day, I can't think of anything else 
     that is actually being accomplished by this policy 
     EXCEPT maintaining reasonable aggregation for 
     aggregation purposes."

Both of these statements have been shown to be incorrect; the goal 
of the policy has never been the avoidance of deaggregation - the
policy was proposed to provide an acceptable mechanism for those
organization which had multiple discrete networks growing at 
different rates and were making use of multiple maintainer ids as 
a workaround. These organizations frequently had compelling reasons 
that precluded them readily sharing a single address pool among 
their multiple networks, and hence the examples of compelling 
reasons listed in the policy.

You have repeatedly suggested that maintaining reasonable route
aggregation should be considering a goal of the policy and hence 
a compelling reason for maintaining multiple discrete networks.
That may desirable, but IT DOES NOT MATCH THE PRESENT POLICY, and 
hence my suggestion that you propose a policy change on the PPML 
mailing list; e.g. you might propose the addition of an example
for "maintaining routing aggregation" and then the policy would 
likely function just as you desire.   Note - I do not know if 
this would be considered desirable by the community, but that 
would be quickly be revealed via the policy development process.

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN