ACSP Suggestion 2009.13: Better Education on 4-byte ASNs

Suggestion

Author: Michael Dillon   
Submitted On: 09 May 2009

Description:

I just wanted to officially record Rob Seastrom’s suggestion from PPML on here.

Probably best to contact him and put his name on it instead of mine.

How about better education *now*? Might get that return rate down substantially if there were some information out there about common platforms and their support for 4-byte ASNs. I asked at the meeting if anyone knew of any “bgp for dummies” style books that talk about 4-byte ASNs and there was not a peep from the audience. Let’s FIX that information gap.

Concrete steps:

  1. ARIN to register fourbyteasn.info or something similar ASAP.
  2. Set up mediawiki on same, just like getipv6.info
  3. I will contribute my experiences, you can too
  4. Make sure that this is referenced prominently in the AS templates or wherever else you go to sign up for an ASN these days.
  5. profit

I believe a month is a reasonable timeline to have this up and running.

Timeframe: Immediate

Status: Closed   Updated: 22 June 2009

Tracking Information

ARIN Comment

22 June 2009

4 byte ASN wiki rolled out: www.get4byteasn.info

ARIN Comment

22 May 2009

A main component of ARIN’s mission is to provide outreach and education to the Internet community. Your suggestion fits well within that goal, and therefore, ARIN will immediately begin looking into ways to provide more concrete information to the community about 4-byte ASNs.

One of your suggestions that we will take action on is to set up a mediawiki on 4-byte ASNs much like we have done with getipv6.info. We expect to be able to roll this out within 30 calendar days. We will also provide further information about 4-byte ASNs in our response letters to applicants, add the link to the new wiki in our templates and in our correspondence letters, and advertise its availability publicly. We will explore the possibility of setting up a domain name as you suggest, though we cannot commit to this without further research on the feasibility of doing so.

Suggestion 2009.13 will remain open until the wiki is published.