Hi Enno,

we are one of those "remnant corner cases" you mentioned. We have a /24 "ASSIGNED PI" that is part of a larger "ALLOCATED UNSPECIFIED" block and we are using this address space for our infrastructure for about 20 years now.

Actually, we don't feel any real pain with the status of that address space. The only pitfall is that we can't make any database changes on our own so we have to ask someone else to do the requested changes on our behalf. In our case we had to ask KPN and at any time they were very friendly and helpful and made all the changes we asked for; they even provided RPKI for that address space. Therefore we don't have a real problem with that netblock; although I would prefer to be able to make database changes on our own; and additionally I'm a little bit uncomfortable that someone else is doing all that service for us for free.

I think it would be a good idea to prepare a policy for this kind of blocks; and for sure I would be willing to help you in doing so.

My first thought was to break up a larger allocation into several sub allocations. However, breaking up e.g. a /16 into several sub allocations due to just a few smaller netblocks within does not sound like the perfect solution to me either (that would have a negative impact to the size of the routing tables). Maybe it would be a solution to work with sub allocations (at least for PA space)?

Kind Regards,
Stefan

Am 30.06.2015 um 21:34 schrieb Enno Rey:

Hi,

some of you might already cringe just from this mail's subject ;-)
I'm currently involved in handling some netblocks which are in "ALLOCATED UNSPECIFIED" state and this turns out to be surprisingly difficult, even in cases where both organizations (that is the LIR holding the covering aggregate and the organization which received the "more specific" PI assignment back in the 90s) apparently agree on a course of action. My impression is that these difficulties not least arise as seemingly no policy exists on "how to convert those assignments into 'ASSIGNED PI' or 'ALLOCATED PA' space". I'm aware that these netblocks might only be "remnant corner cases" totally irrelevant to the majority of the community. Which brings me to the following questions:

a) do any of you "feel the same pain" when it comes to these blocks?
b) do you think a policy proposal should be prepared how to handle those? I'm willing to prepare sth.
c) what could such a proposal look like? What do those concerned think how a reasonable way of moving those blocks into a "stable state" can be identified/described.

many thanks in advance for any type of feedback.
everybody have a pleasant evening

Enno

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