Address space for individuals
Local IRs, I planned to attend the Local IR WG meeting at RIPE last Tuesday, but the meeting was moved to yesterday, the same time as the Mbone WG meeting (where I had to be for "chairing reasons"). And I forgot all about it... As Last Resort IR for The Netherlands I received a request for address space (one C network) from an individual. The person requesting address space tells me he has several machines at home able to talk IP and he wants to interconnect them. Since he has plans to connect his LAN at home to the Internet some day in the future he asks for an official IP network number (which means RFC1597 is of no help in this case). IMHO, this is a question which we will see in an increasingly frequency in the near future. Think of what happens if IP functionality is built in to Microsoft software... I'd like to know whether you have received requests like this before, and how you aproached this issue, since I think "we all" should have a common attitude in Europe (better: world-wide) on this. Thanks for your concern. __ Erik-Jan.
Erik-Jan I have heard of similar cases, usually involving individuals or very small businesses. The potential demand is alarming. At a macro level, the Internet is becoming classless and terms like "Class C" will soon be politically incorrect. However, we're dealing with the micro level, where the application code doesn't know about these new developments. So the smallest unit we can assign is 8 bits of address space. Is there any prospect that this might change? Mike
If you don't mind some comments from a person a little separated from Europe (but you did mention world-wide): JPNIC and APNIC have recieved many requests for addresses for very small numbers of hosts (e.g. 2 or 3). This is a result of firewalls apparently being more popular in this region than elsewhere. In addition, I believe there have been requests to JPNIC from individuals for address space for similar situations as you have experienced. The response to these requests have generally been the allocation of a single class C network. I personally feel it would be highly useful if sub-C allocations were allowed from within service provider address space (only - renumbering individual sites is obviously trivial) in order to get higher address space utilization rates. I'm supposed to be writing a proposal for JPNIC to address this very issue, but I seem to have lost my copious spare time... Cheers, -drc --------
Local IRs,
I planned to attend the Local IR WG meeting at RIPE last Tuesday, but the meeting was moved to yesterday, the same time as the Mbone WG meeting (where I had to be for "chairing reasons"). And I forgot all about it...
As Last Resort IR for The Netherlands I received a request for address space (one C network) from an individual. The person requesting address space tells me he has several machines at home able to talk IP and he wants to interconnect them.
Since he has plans to connect his LAN at home to the Internet some day in the future he asks for an official IP network number (which means RFC1597 is of no help in this case).
IMHO, this is a question which we will see in an increasingly frequency in the near future. Think of what happens if IP functionality is built in to Microsoft software...
I'd like to know whether you have received requests like this before, and how you aproached this issue, since I think "we all" should have a common attitude in Europe (better: world-wide) on this.
Thanks for your concern.
__
Erik-Jan.
On Thu, 19 May 1994 12:23:33 +0200 Erik-Jan Bos wrote:
As Last Resort IR for The Netherlands I received a request for address space (one C network) from an individual. The person requesting address space tells me he has several machines at home able to talk IP and he wants to interconnect them.
Since he has plans to connect his LAN at home to the Internet some day in the future he asks for an official IP network number (which means RFC1597 is of no help in this case).
IMHO, this is a question which we will see in an increasingly frequency in the near future. Think of what happens if IP functionality is built in to Microsoft software...
I'd like to know whether you have received requests like this before, and how you aproached this issue, since I think "we all" should have a common attitude in Europe (better: world-wide) on this.
A couple of random thoughts: - If this person is who I think he is, then his current involvement in TCP/IP is Licensed Amateur Radio related. A class A network number (44.0.0.0) has been designated for this purpose on a worldwide scale. They also use a distributed addressing scheme. To find out the local IR in that case, ask the worldwide coordinator: Brian Kantor <brian@ucsd.edu> Please note that this organisation is very efficient in assigning address space because they assign *one* IP address per person in the default case (people can get more if they ask; most don't). The AMPRnet has been using classless routing, CIDR etc for some years now. (CB applications are *not* valid for network 44 because of strict AUP rules as defined by the government. I know that, at least in the Netherlands, CB persons have nicked network 27.0.0.0 for the same application, but this number has not been assigned to them) - If this person only has a few hosts, then it is probably a good idea to ask him to renumber once he connects to the Internet. I don't believe that renumbering 3 PC's would be that much of a problem. 1597 might be useful after all.. No comments on the general case of individuals asking for IP address space. I hope that my ideas help in this specific case though. Geert Jan
Geert Jan de Groot <GeertJan.deGroot@ripe.net> writes:
- If this person only has a few hosts, then it is probably a good idea to ask him to renumber once he connects to the Internet. I don't believe that renumbering 3 PC's would be that much of a problem. 1597 might be useful after all..
This sums up my personal opinion. If they are not going to connect immediately, then let them use private address space and renumber their 3 hosts later. If they are going to connect immediately, let the service provider registry assign numbers. I know of cases where they subnet part of the SP space. Soon - when we have a classless allocation registry, this can even be registered. Problem solved. No? Daniel
participants (5)
-
Daniel Karrenberg -
David R Conrad -
Erik-Jan Bos -
Geert Jan de Groot -
Mike Norris