US CODE: Title 15, Chapter 1, Section 2.

[Randy Bush]

I share your concerns.  I also share your questioning if this is the place
to solve them.  Smells a bit NANOGish to me.

> To my mind this obligation isn't so much a list of specific do's and
> don'ts (although over time those might evolve), but rather as a general
> mutual obligation to try to honor the grants.  By this, I mean that a
> member is obligated to be reasonable (I know this is vague) about routing
> information for ARIN grants.

While suspect it may not be wise to burden ARIN with this mandate, it has
enough problems already, could something be done to communicate this need
to the culture as a whole?  

Observe that this is current accepted practice for reasonably aggregated
routing.  But, as has been so well demonstrated on this list, what is an
accepted part of the culture today seems not to be understood by the
massive influx of new folk.  We should probably be less surprised than I,
for one, am.

> What I'm fumbling with (and fumbling it is) is the example that you
> brought up -- the medical group that justifies a dual-homed, provider
> independent class C.

What if NSI or ARIN will not allocate less than a /19, and they keep
qualifications for space about the same as they are now?  I.e. the medical
group has no alternative but to take its /24 from one of its providers.
The question becomes whether their other providers will accept that /24
from the medial group and propagate it.  And will any of their peers
listen to a /24?

Before folk who do not run default-free routers today go ballistic, note
that this issue is current today, sans ARIN and independent of the
InterNIC.  If someone bludgeons NSI into giving them a /24 out of 208 or
wherever Kim's allocating this week, it is becoming less and less routable
as more and more of us unstall filters.

So if the InterNIC allows the medical group to bludgeon them out of a /24,
they are really not doing the medical group a favor, in fact, it is a
disfavor.  I suggest that ARIN consider not doing so.

But, as you suggest, much of this is NANOG and IEPG fodder, as it is an
inter-pprovider matter, and neither InterNIC nor ARIN can dictate to the
providers. 

randy