LET'S JUST GO AROUND

[Valdis.Kletnieks at VT.EDU]

On Thu, 06 Feb 1997 03:31:08 +0900, "David R. Conrad" said:
> I'm not at ARIN, but I'd direct your attention to RFC 1814.

Umm.. we need an RFC2026 expert here.  RFC2050 is flagged as 'BCP',
and only references 1814 in the 'references' section.  RFC1814 is
itself tagged as "Informational".

As best I can figure, this means that 1814 is *not* binding in any way
shape or form, so saying "we follow RFC2050" (which ARIN has done)
does not transitively imply following 1814 as well.  The most
applicable part of RFC1814 is at the bottom of page 2:

   If an enterprise with a small to medium number of hosts desires
   unique IP addresses, and is unable to obtain them under reasonable
   conditions from a service provider, or has no service provider, the
   Internet registries are recommended to assign such addresses without
   conditions with respect to service provider selection.  The

But alas, 1814 is only "informational", and it only says "recommended
to assign".  So we'd still need somebody at ARIN to actually say "yes
we'll do that...."

(As an aside, RFC1814 has some classful A/B/C cruft left in it - would
it be worth the effort of doing a re-write for the CIDR world?)