[hostmaster-staff] Re: MIR proposal / reservation revisited?

On Tue, 2 Oct 2001, Michael van Elst wrote:

>> I understand this problem. I just fail to see how this relates to RIPE,
>> multi-level allocations and a deeper registry hierarchy.
>> 
>> If you mix assignments from 17 LIRs in a single AS then the LIRs have
>> to cooperate so that you can aggregate routes as necessary. How would
>> another level or registry help ?

Very simple. If you need 16 x /20 in order to cover your business needs
in multiple countries or multiple regions/cities within a country - you
have two choices:

* To open one LIR and get the initial /20.
* Divide the /20 into 16 x /24's and assign them to the cities.
* When you spend that, ask RIPE NCC for more.

Everything seems logical? NO! Let me explain why: even if such a thing
would always be possible (it's not!), you will end up with small chunks
of address space scattered along various locations in the network. On
the other hand, if you have to configure your POP devices in certain
cities/countries (say, you want to build a large cable or xDSL access
network in 16 cities) - you'll need to spend the whole /20 range
immediately, due to the nature of the service!

On the other hand, if you can get a contiguous /16 immediately, divide
(partition) it to 16 x /20, register that in the RIPE DB and authorize
your national/city representatives to assign address space to the end
customers you can achieve better aggregation, less number of routes to
be announced, both internally (IGP) and externally (BGP). When you
spend an allocation for one location, you just ask for a new allocation
to be used on that particular location.

The only alternative to this approach is opening separate LIRs for
separate countries and cities, getting separate allocations for each
other, which is an administrative nightmare, while the allocations
won't be able to get aggregated!

Regards,
Beri

---------  Berislav Todorovic, Senior NOC Specialist  --------
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