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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Allocation of IP Addresses
Lets take this sample situation (which happens all the time). Fledgling ISP A wants a block of address space, ISP A goes to the NIC directly. The NIC says go to your upstream NSP B. NSP B is a regional and is ready to give out a /19, but ISP A doesn't want to be tied down to a particular NSP. Time goes by. ISP A goes to the NIC again and makes an embelished case to the NIC (thinking that the NIC will give ISP A a /19). Instead the NIC give ISP A a /20. ISP A doesn't have a clue about Sprint's filters (or anyone elses filters). NSP B informs ISP A that the /20 is too long of a prefix to pass through Sprint's filters. ISP A cires bloody murder, and appeals to the NIC asking for the next /20 contiguous to the first one and the NIC says no way. Finally ISP A gets a /19 from NSP B and HAS to renumber. At this point ISP A has renumbered three times (first from a /24, then from a NIC assigned /20, and then finially to a NSP assigned /19). ISP A is still clueless and doesn't even send in the SWIP updates for the block from NSP B. ISP A exhausts the /19 due to inefficient address space utilization and asks for another /19. NSP B says, I see no SWIPs for your block, as far as I can tell you havn't even used it yet. So why did ISP A want NIC assigned address space in the first place? Because, he didn't want to have to renumber anymore after getting it. That way he could go to any NSP and be routed and not have to re-number all his customers. So it all boils down to not wanting to ever have to re-number. Maybe ISP A should talk to the people at pier :-). But seriously, renumbering is more of a preceived problem than it actually is. The ISP's customers would have to renumber if they switched ISPs anyways, so if they are truly happy with the ISP, then they have no reason to leave. Lets face it, if you are starting out you may have to renumber several times if you are trying to get NIC assigned address space. If you get provider assigned address space you will have to renumber if you change providers. The next problem is if you want to be multi-homed (through different NSPs) you will want NIC assigned address space. So lets apply this to the case of the small ISP, * a small ISP shouldn't be concerned about being multi-homed. There are much bigger issues than wasting money and time to become multi-homed. * when the ISP is ready to become multi-homed then it will be big enough to justify large blocks and will have to renumber. * Maybe the problem is reliabilty of the primary link, (say his NSP has major outages all the time), then the ISP made a bad business decision. The ISP should find a reliable provider and renumber. So, if you are a startup ISP and grow and want to become multi-homed you will renumber. It all boils down to renumbering, its a fact of life for a startup ISP. Enough about startup ISPs, what about the case of the corporation that wants/needs to be multi-homed. The easiest way is to just get multiple connections to the same national backbone. This may not be possible in all cases, so you have to get NIC assigned address space, so you have to renumber. Renumbering is a fact of life, so live with it and find ways to do it better and more efficiently. Scott -- [email protected] - KC5NUA - Scott Mace - Network Engineer - Neosoft Inc. Any opinions expressed are mine.
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