Hi, On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 11:48:56AM +0300, Dmitry Kiselev wrote:
The network that started this topic ("we have 10 locations that need a /24 each") is not your typical *LIR* in the first place, and might really be better suited with PI /24s - as that's what they are doing: connecting "independent locations" to the Internet. They are not doing LIR business.
A *LIR* needs a reasonable amount of address space, so I really fail to see why someone would want a /24 PA instead of a /24 PI... (which costs less, and has the same impact on the routing table).
PI does not allow end user assignments in it. In my opinion it is good reason for allow /24 allocations.
Well. I can't really see a scenario where I would assign addresses to end users and would be happy with a /24 allocation - our end users get assignments up to a /23 from us... I think one of the focal points here is the question on whether 'giving a hosted web server an IP address' is 'assigning address space to end users'. The boundary cases ("the customer has a virtual web presence and not even a dedicated IP address" and "the customer is running their own web farm and the ISP routes a /24 towards their firewall") are pretty clear - but there is lots of space for different way to do web server hosting in between (managed servers, rented servers, real servers, vmware entities, vserver/jailed virtual servers, ...) The IPv4 PI policy currently defines the transfer networks between an ISP network and an access customer as "part of the ISP infrastructure" - so if you give /32s to DSL end customers, you could run your whole ISP on a PI block (but you can't give one of these customers a /30 to use behind their router). Which is a bit funny indeed. People have argued to remove the PA/PI distinction. I don't think that this is the right way (due to the fact that PA allocations necessarily need to be more liberal than PI assignments), but maybe we need to loosen up PI rules a bit, as in: "Using addresses from a PI block to number other parties' devices is permitted as long as these devices are connected to the same network, documentation about the usage can be presented to the RIPE NCC, and full responsibility for the addresses (abuse handling etc) is done by the PI holder". (After all, one of the reasons why we document end user assignments in a public database is to be able to contact a person feeling responsible for troubleshooting and abuse handling) "same network" is important to make it crystal clear that "get a chunk of PI and sell off smaller bits to 3rd parties connecting at random to other ISPs" is not the desired intention. Now come and flame me :-) Gert Doering -- APWG chair -- Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations: 128645 SpaceNet AG Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann D-80807 Muenchen HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen) Tel: +49 (89) 32356-444 USt-IdNr.: DE813185279