when & how could policy be changed

[Michael Dillon]

At 5:55 PM -0400 6/30/97, Gordon Cook wrote:

> is there a view from the arin board that with stringent
>dampening it could agree to give everyone a 19/?   or are you saying that
>it would not have do this because the 'big boys' would all agree to route
>20/s?

First, let's not forget that ARIN is a membership organization and the the
"arin board" is the Board of Trustees, not "Directors". One would hope that
the board members will not "direct" but will act on behalf of the members.
Therefore, the view from the ARIN board is less important than the
collective views of the ARIN members.

I don't think anyone is certain what preconditions would need to exist in
order for a policy change that would grant every bona-fide multihomed ISP a
PI prefix but we can see the possibility of having operational realities
considered as part of the policy since the network operators will likely
all be members of ARIN. But I don't think we can clearly see how routing
table sizes, dampening algorithms and filtering will work into the equation
until we have some substantive discussions among ISPs. Right now a lot of
them are either not on this mailing list or are keeping quiet for some
reason.

I personally would like to see some PI space opened up with longer prefixes
than /19. This could be a new /8 like 210/8 that we all agree to allocate
in /20 blocks. Or we could use reclaimed space from the swamp and allocate
it in /20 and/or /21 sizes. In the case of 210/8 we need providers to agree
to adjust their filters. But before we can decide just how this should be
done we need some hard numbers, especially on how many additional routes
the new PI space would add. And we also need some more thorough analysis of
the prefixes that appear to be eligible for aggregation in the weekly CIDR
reports.

>Again, how would you implement such dampening criteria?  call a meeting of
>the Internet Cabal?  Ask the IETF to pass a resolution in Munich?

The Internet Cabal is the product of a fevered imagination and has more to
do with USENET than the real Internet so they are irrelevant to this
question. And I don't think that an IETF resolution is as important as
getting some agreement from the network operators themselves. Remember, the
IETF deals more with standards and protocols while the issue of IP
allocations is currently difficult mostly because of operational issues.

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Michael Dillon                    voice: +1-415-482-2840
Senior Systems Architect            fax: +1-415-482-2844
PRIORI NETWORKS, INC.              http://www.priori.net

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