Hi Saku,
Extended communities are not transported in the Internet. So if I start new company and I want to sell IP transit, I'm competitively in disadvantageous position if I cannot market <myASN>:<action> traffic engineering policies to my customers. Sure I can use privateASN (and I must), but they are clearly less preferable on INET, and almost certainly won't cross many links.
Yes I totally agree here.
I.e. 16b ASN is special and should be under more strict assignment policy, when living without BGP communities is hard.
Problem is the extremely low number of 16b ASN in the pool of every RIR. Although RIPE NCC has a quarantine policy (if am not mistaken) with 000+ ASN in it (NCC can confirm). Strict assignment policy would be great but BGP Communities can be simple justification to get 16b ASN and bypass any hurdles isn't it? -- Best Wishes, Aftab A. Siddiqui