[arin-ppml] ARIN-2012-3: ASN Transfers - Last Call

[Christopher Morrow]

i hate to jump in, but...

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:30 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> On 5/9/12, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
>>>  ARIN-2012-3: ASN Transfers
>>
>> I was asked recently about the number of issued and not presently
>> advertised ASN's in the ARIN region, and thought it best to reply
>> publicly so everyone has the same information.
>>
>> ARIN does not directly monitor ASN usage, but the esteemed
>> Geoff Huston does at <http://www.potaroo.net/tools/asn32/>
>>
>> >From that report as of this morning -
>>
>>    There are 24406 16-bit ASN's assigned to the ARIN region, with
>>    1099 presently in the regional free pool, 8259 unadvertised in
>>    BGP, and 15048 advertised in BGP.
>
> Interesting!
>
> For folks looking for a reason for AS number transfers, here's a thought:
>
> Implementing BGP communities is a nuisance with a 32-bit AS number.
> The convention is: 16 bits AS number, 16 bits tag. Virtually every
> shipping router is configured to display them in this manner. AS

this sounds like an implementation issue with your vendor(s), not a
technical reason for anything to change. vote with your $$ when
talking to vendors.
<snip>

> tagging mechanism for downstreams with more than one BGP link. Where
> an organization wishes to implement communities, a 16-bit AS number is
> *highly* desirable on a technical basis.

no, it really means that again vendors are leaving operations folk
hanging :( more bug reports to vendors seem to be in order.

> Geoff's numbers suggest that there are upwards of 8,000 16-bit as
> numbers recoverable in the ARIN region, some third of the total. Given

that is not at all what they suggest. the numbers geoff
presents/records only show that 8k asn are not visible from his views
of the global table.

They may appear in someone (or many someones) else's tables though...
or they may exist inside places not visible to the outside world.

(btw, I support the proposal going forward to implementation)

-chris