Consequently it has been proposed several times already to close down the Last-Resort registries. I think it is now time to finally take such a step with a timeframe of end Q3/95 or at the end of the year.
Daniel, Some comments: - this would seem to imply that RFC1597 is now *compulsory* for private internets (certainly for those where any member also has a public Internet connection). - does the Internic still give out addresses to end customers ? If so, what is to stop an organisation obtaining addresses from the States, possibly through a US office or subsidiary ? I'm sure organisations are doing this now, but removing the last-resorts registries may well increase its prevalence. - though RIPE could discontinue the official last-resort registries, do we have any protection against providers setting themselves up as de-facto LR registries by selling off part of their provider address space to organisation who do not connect to them ? (this will only punch a hole in the providers aggregates if the organisation the addresses were assigned to decides at a later date to connect to the Internet (via another provider) - I could resell my provider addresses to private Internets without anyone knowing). Non-provider/last-resort address assignments are not currently a major problem on their own - after all the traditional class B's are (almost always) non-provider addresses, yet I don't see anyone suggesting that we should all be renumbering from our B's to addresses within a 193.* or 194.* CIDR block. Granted, we need to avoid allocating lots of long-prefix non-aggregateable addresses - this is the main problem with the last resort registries. Small allocations should be avoidable, as small/medium sized organisations ought to be able to renumber to provider addresses when they connect to the Internet. But equally there is a demand for last-resort addresses from large organisations (certainly within the UK), looking either for a class B or a large block of C's, the typical scenario being a large corporation making the transition from SNA to TCP/IP over the course of a coupel of years, with the intention of connecting to the Internet at the end of this process. Where are these organisations left if the last resort registries are discontinued ? (Answer(?): if they are after a B (certainly, and probably if they want a substantial block of traditional C space) they end up talking to the NCC from day one. Which comes back to Daniel's assertion that last-resort registries use NCC resources without contributing to the NCC; currently last-resort registries do some (albeit sometimes negligible) vetting and frontline processing of class B requests before passing them onto the NCC. Without the LR registries, everything falls on the NCC). Kevin Hoadley, JIPS NOSC