On Sun, 28 Nov 2004, Joe Abley wrote:
When you figure out the mechanism to change the terms under which resources were allocated long before APNIC ever existed, you should let them know. Be sure to remember that the mechanism probably needs to work in every legal jurisdiction on the planet.
Isn't that exactly what's happening here though? IP ranges that were allocated before APNIC existed are potentially[1] having their terms changed. [1] I say potentially because there seems to be a lot of confusion about what's actually changing - some whois records for privacy reasons, "ownership" of IP ranges, or what.
I don't understand the preoccupation with money; the fees that APNIC receive are used to pay their operating expenses.
My point was in reply to Ewan who brought up the impact of route advertisments as a cost for those who operate and maintain routers.
APNIC have a duty to act responsibly. An assignment policy which caused massive increase in state bloat in the DFZ would not be responsible -- and furthermore, would probably result in widespread filtering of the prefixes assigned on that basis, rendering the addresses useless anyway.
I'm not sure anyone (I'm not anyway) is advocating a change in APNIC policy to start handing out /29s to anyone who wants them. The issue at hand seems to be the handling of swamp space and how to bring it into line with current policy. Might I therefore make a suggestion (which I'll also be making directly to APNIC) that the administration of the swamp space be done in a "don't let it get any worse" sort of method. ie. - Anyone who's got some of that space gets to keep it for as long as they're using it (or until policy is later changed to force them off it onto IPv6) - Transfer/delegation of this space is disallowed, except to transfer space back to APNIC as part of PI space allocation. No massive increase in state bloat occurs.
and only a block of IPs is, wouldn't it be better to compare a block of IP addresses with a domain name?
There is nothing to stop anybody advertising a single IP address to anybody. The problem is getting people to listen.
One /32 advert takes up as many router resources as a /19 advert. This point was in regards to resource utilisation and comparitive costs of domain names vs IP blocks/advertisments. --David