Hi Arron, On Mon, 20 Apr 1998, Arron Scott wrote:
so to continue with my discussion, let's talk about IP addressing.
Known: All RFC's and most International Internet access providers encourage the use of hierarchical CIDR based IP addressing. This is for two main objectives, save the Net from address exhaustion and the curse of IPv6, and to ensure the core routers have enough memory to be able to continue forwarding packets.
<pedant>Not _all_ RFCs :)</pedant>
When a downstream customer moves from one provider to another, and his class C network goes with him, his network is now added to the routing table as a black hole, which increases memory utilisation in the core, one or two of these is fine, but hundreds is not very acceptable to the upstream providers.
Unknown: - If a customer does move providers how long should they have before the must renumber into their new providers space ?
I agree - it would be very good to have some agreed guidelines on which to arrange these migrations. I am concerned that a lot of customers seem to have been delegated address space in the past which they consider "theirs", and there is no widespread understanding of what is and isn't possible/advisable/preferred regarding moving around. An agreement would be good for future customer migrations; however, we still face the difficulty of what to do with holes advertised due to customer migrations which have long since happened.
- What size block of a providers space might be considered portable ?
I think that a customer who wants genuinely portable address space should obtain a delegation direct from APNIC. Reasons for wanting to do this are largely (a) a large complex network to number for which renumbering would be an unreasonable hassle, and (b) multi-homing off multiple providers with none preferred.
- What steps can be taken to recover the address space if the customer does not relinquish it ?
Only an informal agreement amongst network operators, I think. Such a
thing could be grafted into the ISOCNZ ISP's code of practice, but since
following the letter of that document is basically at the discretion of
the individual service provider, I'm not sure that would really help
anything.
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Anybody else going to Uniforum this year? Maybe we should organise a NOG
BOF? (NOG BOF. How rediculous :)
Joe
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Joe Abley