Address space for individuals

>   > poole at eunet.ch writes:
>   > 
>   > I beg to differ with most of the opinions voiced up to now. I have
>   > big problems with Ripe rushing off and changing the rules yet another
>   > time  with -no- convincing arguments and analysis that any significant
>   > problem will be solved by this change of policy.
> 
> Can you please point to other needless and unmotivated changes? 
> Otherwise I will regard this paragraph as noise. 

I didn't say that changes up to now have been unmotivated, however one
of the  the problems of local-ir's are that the criteria for address
allocation in Europe have been continuosly changing and that this causes
a significant ammount of pain every time.

>   > Before I would agree to a formal "sub-class C" allocation policy, 
>   > I would like to see:
>   > 
>   > 	- a study on how much address space will be actually saved 
>   > 	  by this change. 
> 
> If any address space can be saved and there are no ill effects this is
> not really a necessity. 

Life tends not to be so simple, any such decision is a trade off between
positive and negative affects. I would be quite willing to accept a 
significant burden for an order of magnitude gain in address space usage
but not for a factor of two. To be able to make a sensible decision we
do need the information.

>   >Taking into account:
>   > 
>   > 		- current available services from ISP's. For example
>   > 		  a large number of ISP's already have "single address"
>   > 		  dialup IP services where address are allocated out
>   > 		  of ISP network numbers.
> 
> This is just a special case of doing what the proposal says. 

Yes, however this might -already- cover the major part of what this
policy wants to regulate.

>   > 		- granularity of allocation.
> 
> I don't understand what you mean exactly.  Currently noone can assign
> anything smaller than 8 bits. 

The efficiency of any "sub-class C" allocation policy will depend on
what the recommend "chunk" size is and how that plays into the technical
realisation (routing etc.).

>   > 		- loss of efficency due to the fact that most ISP's
>   > 		  do not use CIDR capable routing protocols internally.
> 
> If it cannot be done it cannot be done.  If it can be done it should be
> done.  I do not understand what "loss of efficiency" means.  

If the ISP equipment is not CIDR aware, then the ISP will have no
other choice than to allocate complete classful addresses to whatever
it uses as routing equipment (support for variable length subnets
plays in to this aswell).

								If it is
> too ineficcient for whatever reason (which you do not discuss) then it
> cannot be done.  The proposal just says that "last-resort" IRs will not
> assign address space and ISPs should do their best. Some will do better
> and some will do badly.

There are two different issues here:

	- last-resort IR's will not allocate address space for VSE's, I
	  don't have any problems with this as long as it is coordinated
	  internationally and not an Europe only decision.

	- allocation of address space for actually Internet connected 
	  entities.

> 
>   > 		- projected demand for address space for less than
>   > 		  32 hosts. This will require statistical information
>   > 		  on company size etc. 
> 
> This is shooting a fly with a 122mm gun.
>
> Projections can also be called "wild guesses".  Any reliable projections
> in a fast developing market as ours are bound to be either very
> inaccurate or very short term.  Several last-resort registries have
> experienced demands from individual users and/or very small companies. 
> This is projection enough for me. 

The numbers of companies per country and their sizes has nothing to do 
with the Internet per se. The assumptions can be made when we discuss
how many will actually connect.

>   >               (I don't think the odd hobbyist
>   > 		  with more than one machine is of such great concern.)
> 
> Your personal projection. 
> 
> I for one am quite sure that this case and the case of very small
> enterprises is all but odd.  I see such requests daily and I am sure we
> see only a fraction of them at the NCC.  Other evidence: the discussion
> about domain names for individuals.  If there are only 1024 of these
> requests (very low estimate) to all EU last-resort registries in the
> next 12 months we can either assign them 18 bits of address space (4Bs
> or 1024Cs for old-timers) or nothing. 

As said above very likely such indvidual sites are already covered by
single address allocations by ISP's.

> 
>   > 	- disussion of alternatives (new classes of Internet numbers
>   > 	  etc.) and why they do not solve the problem.
> 
> If you want to discuss an alternative, propose one. 
> 
> (BTW: the IPv4 Internet is going classless.  A new "class" is going
> backwards.)

The IPv4 Internet is going classless at the ISP interconnect level,
assuming anything else right now is very speculative.

Simon