Comments on " Guidance in the Assignment of Internet Numbers"

Christian,

>Thanks for your detailed comments. I believe that we agree on the two
>goals of developping connectedness and using the address space
>reasonably. It may well be that the IAB praise connectedness above
>all, while down in the trenches you have fight off a number of
>unreasonable demands.

In my opinion, it is not so much unreasonable demands, although APNIC
receives many requests that would definitely fall within any
definition of unreasonable, as the criteria which the registries must
operate are very ill-defined and do not reflect the circumstances
of today's Internet.

Further, there appears to be at least two minds when it comes to the
issues of conserving address space and CIDRization.  I feel that the
registries, being heavily involved with the group that is interested
in conservation and aggregation, have become significantly more
concerned with the reducing address space wastage and encouraging CIDR
than the draft statement would indicate the IAB feels is appropriate.

>There is one phrase in the example you give which rings a lot of
>alarm bells.  "For technical reasons we cannot use VLSMs or
>subnetting." This is just unacceptable; the goal of connectedness
>cannot be achieved without supporting CIDR, i.e. both subnetting and
>supernetting.

Are you stating that it is acceptable for registries to decline to
allocate space if an organization does not implement VLSMs?

>The reference to RFC 1466 in the draft already imply this technical
>requirement;

Does it?  Or are you indicating you feel RFC 1466 implies this
technical requirement?

>it may be a good idea to explicitly restate it.

I feel that it would be in the best interests of the entire Internet
if many of the assumed policies, some of which are hinted at within
the draft statement, are made explicit.  The registries are in the
unenviable position of playing judge and jury for most assignments and
this role is performed with varying degrees of rigor globally.  It
would seem clear to me that at the very least, RFC 1466 should be
revised before this draft statement is made into an RFC.

Regards,
-drc