Policy Statement on Address Space Allocations

>   > Peter Galbavy <peter at demon.net> writes:
>   > Hierarchical routeing is a flawed paradigm as well. CIDR is even more
>   > flawed, but it works at the moment. 
> 
> Thanks for amitting at least that much ;-).
> Would you care to share your thoughts on less flawed paradigms
> that will work with current or near-future kit ({hard,firm,soft}ware for
> the non-british)?

I wish I knew. In this I am the worst type of couch potato. I can
identify the problem but I am very unlikely to provide the solution.
Not in this case at least. I suspect it is because I have not spent
enough time involed with the politics of the 'net as maybe I should
have.  This is much more of a political problem than a technical one.

Just to spend a few minutes thinking about it, what do the phone
companies do ? They are the nearest thing with a large installed base
that the Internet even begins to map onto. There are however some
fundemental differences - primarily the fragmentation of Europe (which
is not the case in the US).

We have a 2Mb line from London to Amsterdam which costs us very much
the same as a T1 from London to Washington.  As I understand it, this
"milk them for all they are worth" pricing of the telcos applies to
cross-border land lines in Europe also.

All this impacts very severely on the commercial decisions taken as to
the routeing of traffic. I would much rather buy more lines to the US
and let the traffics flow back to Europe then to just buy lines to
Europe.  Luckily, commercial concerns are not the only contraints
within which we have to work.

>   > CIDR really only works if the
>   > block allocated are actually routed geographically. 
> 
> Yes, CIDR works if addresses are allocated *somewhat* topologically.

And in the case of (I am guessing) > 70% of RIPE NCC allocated addresses
are not. This is no ones "fault", just the way the policy is. Therefore
I say the policy is WRONG.

>   > As a provider
>   > our primary Internet links outside of the UK are all the the USA.
>   > We, however, *have* to come to RIPE for "European" address space.
> 
> The continental component in address space allocation is pure policy and
> has little to do with CIDR.  The policy only seems unreasonable when
> considering only the issue you raise. 

But it is the *primary* issue. What else is there that influences how
addresses are allocated in a CIDR or hierarchical way ? Timezones ?
We have e-mail for admin - it is timezone orthoganal. The existance
of the RIPE NCC should just be remote, local staff for the InterNIC.
If the RIPE NCC applies a "local model" then it is not conforming
to the policies of IANA and the IAB that you keep referring to.

> Personally I believe that even this issue is irrelevant for providers of
> the size of Demon.  It makes no difference where you get a /16 from. 

Except you will not, even with correct justifications, give us one for
our dial up services.

To wash some dirty laundry here, we as a provider have been trying to
get new address space for our dial up customers from RIPE NCC for almost 6
months now. We allocate *each* dialup customer *1* IP address from a
block and dynamically route them based on where they log in to the
service (including RSN Amsterdam). The RIPE NCC has >effectively< refused
us space because they believe that we should change the product we
sell and use dynamic IP for dialups.

We are the largest dialup ISP in Europe. We are not the largest provider
in Europe because we follow the rest of the ISPs like sheep, buying Ciscos
and installing off the shelf terminal servers. We provide a product which
our customers understand gives them *more* for their money. We do something
different, and the customers like it. Tough fact of business life that.

Eventually, Daniel has very kindly allocated a /19 of space... which is
vastly too small for our growth. We started using this space about 8
days ago and have used > 15% of it. Ouch. We are doubling in size
between every 5 and 8 months. Within the guildlines for address
allocation we can easily demonstrate filling a /16 in this sort of
timescale.

The RIPE NCC believes it can dicate the business model we use, which
has been established for > 3.5 years. This is unlikely to happen.

I will not discuss in a public forum the odd schemes that Daniel
suggested for "verifying" our use of the address space. But they were
odd. It is not the NCC's job to doubt us when we say we have filled the
address space. Does the NCC go and visit ACME Ltd to see that it really
has all the PCs and server before allocating some more address space ?
Didn't think so.

> The real issues here are ones of control and attribution of cost.

Yes. You collect the RIPE NCC contributions and remain in control.
Simple. I am considering my personal view on making this not the case.

>   > I cannot accept that we have to >beg< RIPE like a good little provider
>   > for address space that should be allocated to us from the USA anyway.
> 
> I know that you object against allocation and assignments policies we 
> apply to you as to any other local registry (provider) we serve. 
> Yet the particular policies you object to, are the ones set by IANA
> and applicable globally.  You mistakenly assume that these policies 
> would not be applied if you were dealing with the InterNIC. 

Please read the policies again. You policy uses words like "strongly
discouraged" for static IP allocation, not "disallowed".  You have
attempted to strongly discourage us, we have not been so discouraged,
and now give up and give us the address space we are *entitled* to.

>   > I will be interested to see how the RIPE actually works (and not just
>   > listening to Daniel dictate policy by e-mail) when I go to my first RIPE
>   > meeting next week. So far it seems like a bureaucracy that is entirely
>   > self perpetuating and self interested without consider what the people
>   > who pay for its very existance want. sigh. Just like an unelected
>   > government in fact.
> 
> Thank you for the public ad hominem. :-(.  I consider this bad style.
> I suggest you examine my personal track record more closely
> before repeating such attacks.

But this is all I have seen you do, therefore, how can I but believe
that this is the case. Every private mail that has been sent to us as
a company involves you acting as God and us as the grovelling peasants
praying for a benidication of address space. I have all these mails
in my various folders, as do you.

> RIPE is not a bureaucrazy. It is about as lightweight as an organisation
> can get.

I did not say it was a heavy bureaucrazy (sic), but a bureaucracy is
nevertheless harmful if it prevents those members it purport to
represent from doing.

> The RIPE NCC is also not a bureaucrazy.  I can assure you that
> *everyone* here would rather do *any* of the other activities that we
> are supposed to do but registration services.  Yet this job has to be
> done and done fairly.  We also consider *very carefully* what the people
> that pay for our very existance want.  We have well documented and
> working meachanisms for that.  We have a contributors committee where each
> local registry in good standing (yourselves incluided) is represented 
> which decides on our activites and charges. We have RIPE to direct our 
> activities technically.  All these processes are open and well documented.
> I am quite happy that you plan to get involved in these processes.

I wish I had the time, but it appears that we will have to make the
time to get more involed. sigh.

> What we do *not* do is consider *individual* interests of some over 
> the ones of others.  If we would do that we would eliminate our 
> "raison d'etre". 

Why not. We are not a communist society are we ? Each individual member
of RIPE have their own unique requirements in a commercial and
academically challenging world. We have a USP (Unique Selling Point) of
giving our paying customers there own IP address (OK - it is not
unique, but close enough). We have built propretary technology that
allows our users to use *any* of our dial in points and get the same
service, with the same IP number etc etc, and as one of our primary USPs
we cannot allow the RIPE NCC to try to change that.

> If you do not like the RIPE NCC model, consider the alternatives.
> You seem to be keen to have the US government set the policies.
> Or maybe you want governmental regulation closer to home?

The RIPE NCC model probably would work if it took into account that
fact that its members are (on the whole) commercial organisations
that sell differing products and services and have different
requirements of the NCC. This does not appear to be the case.

Regards,
-- 
Peter Galbavy                                                 peter at demon.net
@ Demon Internet                                      phone://44/181/371_3700
                                            http://www.wonderland.org/~peter/
                  snail://UK/N3_1TT/London/42_Hendon_Lane/Demon_Internet_Ltd/