MIR proposal

<CUT>

Hi Gert,

> 
> And yes, this is also very much needed for IPv6.  Getting a /35 and
> having to hand out individual /48's to customers of customers of ours 
> isn't going to build proper hierarchical routing.

The concepts for IPv6 that are under discussion do already cover this.
An allocation goes to a large ISP who can then assign /48's directly to 
networks connecting to them or shorter prefixes to resellers/downstreams.

I'm not sure if this works in IPv4 because of the limited amount of room we 
have to play with. 

I'm also not sure what the criteria would be in the proposal that defines
who is and isn't allowed to become a MIR. It's certainly a differnet concept
to the present one in the RIPE region where LIR's don't "officially" sub-
allocate. 

I can certainly see why a large ISP would want to do this. I'm not sure how 
it changes the dynamics for smaller ISP's as to how they would get their IP 
addresses. Becoming an LIR with an upstream rather than a regional registry 
I assume means renumbering if you change the upstream.

John Crain