Hello all, A few weeks ago I send the following proposal to the lir-wg mailing list for comments. Since no comments were received, we are assuming that nobody has objections to change the policy. We have therefore decided to implement it starting immediately. Kind regards, Paula Caslav RIPE NCC ------- Forwarded Message Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 14:38:52 +0100 From: Paula Caslav <paula@ripe.net> Sender: owner-lir-wg@ripe.net To: lir-wg@ripe.net Subject: static verification methods Hello all, At the Local IR working group at RIPE 32, the issue was raised about changing the policy for applying verification methods to cable connections. Here is our proposal on how to change this policy. First some background: A few years ago, the IANA asked the Regional Registries to keep an eye on "very small assignments to individuals". This means cases like static dial-up where a registry has to use one IP address per dial-up customer. Since these kinds of assignments could potentially use up a lot of address space, it was decided to strongly discourage using static addresses for this and that that we should monitor these assignments more closely. To do this, any Local Registry that assigns a lot of addresses for this purpose (more than 1024 addresses), was requested that they would have to enter each of these customers in the database individually (as is the case with all assignments to end-users). Later when some Local Registries had a problem with entering all their dial-up customers in the database for confidentiality problems, it was decided to add an alternative method that they could instead send us a weekly report showing the customers they added that week. This is so that the Regional Registries could still keep track of these kinds of assignments. In the last few years, more and more technologies have come along that fall under this procedure. Aside from static dial-up, other services such as web hosting (when not using http 1.1), cable connections, ADSL connections, some ISDN connections, etc.. often need to assign one IP address per customer. In many of these cases, using one IP address per customer is necessary because the host is usually permanently connected to the Internet. The issue was raised that applying these verification methods to technologies that are permanently connected to the Internet and need one IP address per customer, is too cumbersome and adds a lot of extra administrative overhead for the provider. We also realise that there are inconsistencies between the Regional Registries in dealing with these technologies. For these reasons, we would like to change the policy and make a distinction between technologies that are usually connected to the Internet permanently and those that are connected only temporarily. Here is the proposal for the new policy, please give us your comments by the end of next week. Permanently online: This includes technologies such as cable, ADSL, and various server (web, ftp, etc..) connections that are usually permanently connected to the Internet. It can also include analogue or digital (ISDN) dial-up connections if they are used for a service that needs to be permanently online and for services like dial-out on demand. For most of these connections, you need to assign one IP address per connection, even if using DHCP (which we recommend because it makes renumbering easier). We propose to change the policy and to not apply the verification methods to these types of connections. For these technologies, we still need to keep track of the amounts of addresses being assigned, however we would do this whenever the customer requests a new assignment for this purpose. Since these services are permanently connected to the Internet, we will probe these addresses to verify whether the assigned addresses really are in use. It must therefore be made clear to the RIPE NCC exactly which block of IP addresses is used for this purpose. We would expect to see that a high percentage are reachable. We might at this point request additional information to show that they have really used the addresses that were assigned for this purpose in the past- this could be in the form of a list of all URLs assigned, their DNS records, config files, etc.. something to show that the IP addresses are all in use. Virtual web hosting is the only one that has an alternative available (http 1.1) that would allow assigning one IP address for several hosts. Since we want to encourage that people use http 1.1, we propose to continue applying the special verification methods to virtual web hosting that doesn't use http 1.1. Temporarily online: This includes technologies that only need to be connected to the Internet temporarily, such as most telephone dial-up connections. We recommend the use of DHCP and assigning IP addresses based on the number of modem ports. We will therefore continue to apply the special verification methods to any organisation that assigns IP addresses based on the number of customers instead. ------- End of Forwarded Message