Matthew Poole wrote:
On Wed, 1 Dec 2004, John Tran wrote: *SNIP* a really interesting e-mail
First, John, that was most enlightening. Thanks.
One point that was raised in this discussion is that, for many NZ (and other pacific-based) organisations, a /21 is a huge requirement. A lot of companies can justify a /24, maybe even a /23, or a /22 at a stretch, but a /21 is just out of the realms of possibility, probably ever. APNIC policies seem to be more biased towards the A than the P, even with the change from /20 to /21. Obviously a country could set up an NIR to do smaller allocations, but a lot of the little islands out there are unlikely to have the infrastructure to run their own NIR with any kind of reliability. Not to mention that their sub-allocation requirements wouldn't justify the resources and expense.
Let's keep this on the topic of getting the five blocks in question sorted out. The problems of Pacific countries and IP allocations to them is not relevant to the question in hand. It is possible to get a /24 allocated from APNIC as far as I can see if you're applying for multihomed address space which is often the reason that people want their own address space. You then still face potential problems in having that routed globally but that's part of the trade off for not using address space from an ISP. I'm also interested in the truism that having your own /24 is a "good thing". How many entities with a /24 actually have anything remotely approaching 254 machines which are publicly visible from the net? From the perspective of having unwanted net probes delivered to your gateway router the smaller block you have the better - but a /28 or /29 is something that you get from your ISP.