Fixed Boundary (/29) Assignments

Two things: Alot of what you state is not a new problem, I know
of several organisations that have emailed the RIPE to complain
about the activities of some SPs, with regards to IP addressing,
secondly for this entire reply do a s/telcos/service provider/g

> Large European Telco 'Alman Telecom' sells it's DSL product very well. The 
> marketing of the product spec actually mentions that the customer will be 
> getting 16 IP addresses. Customers know the Alman brand, and they see what 
> it offers and hence they go for it.
> 
> As a side note, RIPE need to be aware that telcos are mentioning right now 
> how many IPs are given in a product, and do not mention RIPE anywhere in 
> the contract or make the customer aware that there is that RIPE obligation.

Have you purchased anything from all of these big telcos? Have you gone
through the proceses for every [any] telco? Whilst they may not mention RIPE
alot of providers do a justification form within their order form
[COLT and one other "major player" does this in the UK]. 

> Small Startup Telco 'LastChoice Telecommunications' offers the same 
> product, but is new in the market. It has to compete for market share and 
> has to offer something better than Alman. One way of doing this... and 
> remember product managers are not always IP literate, is to offer more IP 
> addresses. This strategy is also fine by the marketing director and every 
> other director in the organisation - as they are not concerned about 
> RIPE... to them, they have paid  RIPE and they have the IP addresses (note 
> that AFAICS, a lot of the new LIRs are telcos with non-IP people or people 
> who are not experienced with RIPE - and I really believe that RIPE need to 
> acknowledge this).
> 
> Today, number of IP addresses given to a customer *are* used as a market 
> share gaining tool.

I don't think this is hugely widespread as you are implying although I do
accept that it is happening - but this is an old problem, I remember
the leased line "we'll give you a class C guv" issues.

> So, IMHO, the main issue is to look at the industry itself and look at how 
> the big players are acting first, and to bring them in line.

Absolute rubbish - The industry needs to be looked at across the board,
and not just in this product line, many companies providing DSL
access, who are not big players, but because of their speed to the
market are gaining a large chunk of the market share.

> Further on from this, we need to look at how DSL is being rolled out and 
> how the telcos want to sell the product. A lot of the telcos I talk to want 
> to be doing a minimum of 100 xDSL sales per day! Under traditional 
> techniques, this would require each telco to have a large number of 
> hostmasters/people to deal with 141 forms in an efficient manner... telcos 
> do not want to spend money on getting more people.. So what do they do 
> instead? Either 141 forms do not get filled or 'standard' RIPE forms are 
> filled in, and/or the quality of the data in a 141 form falls. In addition, 
> RIPEs auditing activities become more resource hungry.

I agree that this is true.

> 
> My proposal would be a change in policy, incorporating the points that Leo 
> has raised, such that:
> 
> 1) Standard 141 forms / standard details are allowed for xDSL assignments. 
> These standard forms should allow an automatic assignment to the end 
> customer of 4 IP addresses (instead of 8 as suggested by Leo. This can 
> cover both residential and business customers. After all, ISPs should push 
> NAT in the main ;)

If you do this it won't help this issue- most people want more than
1 usable address, esp if they have a firewall or mail server.

> 2) For those customers who require that bit more, they can go through the 
> standard 'what we have come to love' RIPE-141 procedure. :-)

I'm not sure what you mean by the RIPE-141 procedure? But in my view
for any number of IP addresses >1 RIPE-141 data should be collected in
the normal way, [to be frank anyone who doesn't know what their customer
is doing isn't a good service provider and won't be able to upsell
them lovely value adds :-)]. but I accept that this isn't everyones
pitch, and in the residential market this is difficult to manage- but
to be frank a SP has to take bank details address etc for installation
is the data asked for in a 141 form really all that much more to ask for?
I don't think so. [SP's could webify it and offer a 5-10 pound discount 
for orders placed via the web or something along those lines].

> So the best of both worlds.. standard set up customers throughout Europe - 
> RIPE knows what is happening and most ISPs/Telcos can be happier where they 
> can spend more time earning their money.. and for anything else, the 
> standard RIPE procedures are followed.
> 
> ISPs/Telcos should be kept to this policy and they should be discouraged 
> from advertising 'x number of IP addresses' with their products...

I agree with the above but in reality its almost impossible to achieve.

> Oh, and those ISPs that push NATd xDSL with 1 static IP for the customer.. 
> maybe a pat on their back. ;-)

Indeed, but again this applies to a number of products, dedicated access, 
hosting, cable access, isdn access and colo. 

The issue that it seems that is trying to be solved is mostly an old one
and the fact that people have higher volumes of network requests shouldn't
be the only factor in deciding policy.

Regards,
Neil.