North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Internic address allocation policy

  • From: Vadim Antonov
  • Date: Sun Mar 19 22:15:31 1995

That silly argument boils down to the very simple observation:

Authorithy should be in hands of those who can _enforce_ and _verify_.

I.e. InterNIC shoudl go out of address allocation business completely
and ISPs should step in.

Can they enforce?  You bet.  If you try to announce network 1.0.0.0
as a SprintLink's customer you'll see filters in place before you
say "amen".

Can they verify?  Sure.  I'm declining lots of bogus requests for
address space -- and then proceed with explaining how to use subnets
or whatever.  I can always check how the access link is loaded, what
routes are really announced etc.  Recently somebody asked me to route,
like, 12 class Bs, over a 56k link.  Turned out they need three class Cs,
but grabbed lots of Bs back then when InterNIC was very liberal.

The allocation should be performed by service providers in the "food
chain" order -- to ensure reasonable aggregation.  I.e. nation-wide
and world-wide service providers should allocate blocks to regional ISPs,
etc.

Do "big" service provider need to be "checked" by users?  I don't think
so because they bet millions on the future of the Internet and won't
willingly destroy the market.  The fierce competition in the area also
ensures that they won't use the address allocation as means of sqeezing
small service providers out.  And at least two of them fear anti-trust
litigation more than coming of Antichrist.

You may like it or dislike it but nation-wide backbone providers
effectively run the Internet nowadays.  It is a rare case when
big businesses actually introduced some common sense in the way
things are done architecture-wise.  Why not to do the same with
the address allocation?

--vadim