Hi, as the one who made the Sub-Allocation proposal, let me try to clarify a few things. On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 12:46:18PM +0000, Kristofer Sigurdsson wrote:
I am currently doing some work for a small ISP with a fair number of clients, that wants to get a sub-allocation (in accordance with the new sub-allocations policy). We are going to request a /20 allocation from our primary uplink. However, we may have difficulties in showing usage for a /20 assignment for ourselves and our current customers (we're not far from it, though), but we need this allocation to deal with near-future customers. We are also going to request an AS in order to be properly multi-homed, which means we need the /20 right away to avoid prefix filters.
Sub-Allocation size should not be based on routing considerations. If you get a /22 (or similar), and someone "out there" is not accepting that announcement, packets will always travel over your upstream's aggregate (/16 or whatever they announce), so you can be reached.
We could of course, in accordance with the RIPE community's "slow-start" mechanism, start with a smaller allocation, or even just request assignments for ourselves, our customers, and then new customers as we go along, but this would mean lots of CIDR blocks, instead of just one /20.
Depending on the layout and fragemntation of your upstream's network, it might be a good compromise to start with a smaller sub-allocation, but "keep" the remaining part of a /20 available in case you need it. If you really need the /20 quickly, it will be there. (If the address space is not there, I suggest that your upstream talks to the RIPE hostmasters how to solve that - a new allocation might be required. Maybe they can also demonstrate proper assignments of /23s and get their AW raised...) [..]
Now, my question to the list is, when will the sub-allocation policy be operational, and how will one request such an allocation? Presumably, RIPE will provide a sample allocation request form, any idea when?
There's no official request form (yet) because the sub-allocation thing is something that's happening between you and your upstream. The NCC is /not/ involved here (normally).
Any ideas on how to do this without a sub-allocation? Any way for our uplink to "reserve" a /20, which would then origin from our AS, and then assign chunks of it to us as we go along, maybe?
This would be the traditional way that people have been doing it before the sub-allocation policy. It's messy, cause you can't properly document what's happening. Gert Doering -- NetMaster -- Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations: 56285 (56029) SpaceNet AG Mail: netmaster@Space.Net Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Tel : +49-89-32356-0 80807 Muenchen Fax : +49-89-32356-299