Policy Proposal 2002-7: Micro-Assignments for Multihomed Organizations [Archived]

Status: Abandoned

Tracking Information

Discussion Tracking

Mailing List:

Formal introduction on PPML on 25 September 2002

Public Policy Mailing List

ARIN Public Policy Meeting:

ARIN X

ARIN Advisory Council:

31 October 2002
22 November 2002

ARIN Board of Trustees:

18 March 2003

Revisions:

None

Implementation:

Author(s):

ARIN should reduce the current minimum IP allocation requirement to /21-/24 if an organization is multihomed and actively using AS number(s).

ARIN may periodically inquire and verify that the multihomed organization is actively using AS number(s). ARIN may reclaim its IP’s from organizations that no longer are multihomed and/or stop using AS number(s). The following new fee schedule for /21 - /24 should be implemented as follows (based on the current fee schedule with a smaller minimum):

$400.00 per year for /23 - /24

$1000.00 per year for /21 - /22

1. ARIN’s current minimum IP allocation policy has a direct correlation with the size of a company. Generally a company that uses a /20 IP allocation has a larger network and customer base, therefore they would be considered in the category of large size companies. This policy currently discriminates, puts a small business at a disadvantage and promotes and helps to monopolize large ISP’s and upstream providers.

2. Currently, many ISP’s and upstream providers are in bankruptcy and/or have gone out of business; therefore, getting IP’s from upstream providers is no longer a good solution since small businesses will have the disadvantage of returning and re-numbering their IP’s.

3. Once a small business obtains IP addresses from their upstream providers, upstream providers are able to hold that small business “hostage” and increase their rate without any consequences, because the level of difficulty to move to another upstream provider is great and could put the small company out of business.

4. The global routing table and its minimum allocation requirement must be investigated by several third party technology companies, who are non-partial and do not benefit from ARIN’s decision in any way. They could determine what is the best minimum requirement in order for the Internet to run at its optimum and without any routing table problems.

5. ARIN’s current policy of the minimum requirement of /20 addresses promotes IP usage and reduces the ability to conserve IPs, such as virtual hosting, for web sites. Companies now have to come up with wasteful uses for IPs that they don’t really need, just to qualify for the current policy minimum.

6. ARIN’s current policy automatically qualifies a multihome organization to obtain an AS number. There isn’t any minimum IP requirement to obtain AS numbers and AS numbers have the direct effect of increasing the global routing table.

7. Regarding the global routing table issue, memory is very inexpensive now, and Cisco is introducing new router models with a larger D-RAM size, that are reasonably priced and affordable by small businesses.

8. Theoretically, there are 4 billion IPv4 addresses available. Out of that, only a small fraction of them (Approx. 100 million) are being used and approx. 2.3 billion are being allocated. This makes the current minimum allocation policy not practical. Large organizations are sitting on an exorbitant amount of IP addresses that they are not using and/or not capable of ever being used. As an example, there is a company that owns approximately 7 million IP addresses and has roughly 153,000 employees (employees as of Nov, 1999). What is the justification for receiving such large IP space, when a small business is not allocated any IP space?