[routing-wg] RIPE Document Published - ripe-555, Address Space Managed by the RIPE NCC

Hello Andrea

Thanks for the quick feedback.  Please see my comments inline.

On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:37:43 +0200, Andrea Cima <andrea at ripe.net> said:

> Dear Alexander,

> On 7/10/12 10:46 AM, Alexander Gall wrote:
>> On Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:24:31 +0200, Andrea Cima <andrea at ripe.net> said:
>> 
>>> Dear colleagues,
>>> The RIPE Document ripe-555, "Address Space Managed by the RIPE NCC", has
>>> been published. The document is available at:
>>> https://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-555/
>>> This RIPE Document updates ripe-510 and now points to the extended
>>> delegated statistics containing the full list of resources that the RIPE
>>> NCC manages.
>>> The document also reflects the fact that the RIPE NCC needs to be able
>>> to issue blocks of any size from any /8, so the document was updated
>>> accordingly.
>> Am I the only one who is confused by this document?  I don't care much
>> about IPv4, but this scares me:
>> 
>> The smallest prefix assigned by the RIPE NCC from any IPv6 range is a /48.

> A /48 is the minimum assignment size for IPv6 PI and IXP assignments.
> Please see:
> http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-552#IPv6_PI_Assignments
> http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-451

Ok.  I try to explain below why the current formulation can appear to
be misleading for some people that used RIPE-510 for a particular
purpose.

>> At the same time, this text from RIPE-510, Section 4 has been removed
>> 
>> Network operators taking routing decisions based on prefix length
>> are requested and encouraged to route at least blocks of sizes
>> corresponding to the longest prefix and larger.
>> 
>> If this means what I naively think it does, I'd have missed the entire
>> discussion about what I would perceive as a fundamental change in
>> policy.

> RIPE 555 is not a RIPE Policy document but a RIPE NCC organisational 
> document. The scope of this document is to list the address space 
> managed by the RIPE NCC.

You may underestimate the relevance of this document for operators :)
Either that or I overestimate it.

>> So, I guess I'm just thoroughly confused.  Can somebody help
>> me understand what exactly RIPE-555 means?
>> 

> I apologise if I have not been clear about the changes. I will try to 
> clarify further.

> RIPE 510 listed only the /8s allocated to the RIPE NCC by IANA. With 
> RIPE 555, our aim is to provide the full and current list of all address 
> space managed by the RIPE NCC, therefore increasing the quality of the 
> data provided.

That's much appreciated.  However, this list is missing a piece of
information that some people have been using for many years to
generate "martian/bogon"-type route filters.  From the old "longest
prefix per block" list (and there is, or at least used to be such a
list for every RIR), these people (like us) generate filters for BGP
that deny all longer prefixes in such a range.  I don't see how we can
infer this information from the file.  For example, how do we know
exactly which IPv6 block has been set aside for IXP assignments in
order to allow more specific prefixes in it?  Even if this information
is available from somwhere (though I wouldn't know where), it would be
useful to have a single place where this is recorded (and this place
used to be RIPE-510 and its predecessors).

Section 4 also has tremendous potential for misunderstandings, given
the meaning of "longest prefix" in RIPE-510, which differs
substantially from that of the /29 and /48 mentioned in RIPE-555.

Regards,
-- 
Alex