Last Resort Registries

  > Kevin Hoadley <kevin at nosc.ja.net> writes:
  > 
  >    - this would seem to imply that RFC1597 is now *compulsory* for private
  >      internets 

No, see my answer to Simon.

  >    - 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.

The only barrier is that the InterNIC will not assign anything if they 
are clearly in Europe. Deviousness of course is always a possibility.
The only attractivenessof the InterNIC at the moment is that it is
free.

  >    - 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).

There is nothing to stop them.  Indeed it is perfectly legitimate for
provider IRs to assign PI space if they so choose.  But it would be
against their own interests to punch holes in their CIDR blocks. 
ripe-127 suggests that they should use seperate parts of the address
space for that. It also says that they not normally get allocations
for that, but get it from the NCC on an as-needed basis.

  > Non-provider/last-resort address assignments are not currently a major prob
  > lem 
  > 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 al
  > l
  > be renumbering from our B's to addresses within a 193.* or 194.* CIDR block
  > .

I mentioned the main problems im my proposal.

  > 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 Inter
  > net.
  > 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, wit
  > h
  > 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 ?

They can go to any other IR.

  > (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).

That is true only if no provider IRs decide to provide this service.
I have strong suspicions that they will provide this service,
for a fee of course.

Again: The main problem here is perception. It should be made clear to
end-users that getting PI space does not guarantee routability on the 
Internet. 

Daniel