[address-policy-wg] Complaint: Overly complicated when requesting PI space

Hello Members,

I'd like to state a complaint toward overly complicated issues with 
requesting PI space as a LIR for a customer.

Situation: I have a customer who's purchased a router and wants his own 
IP space+AS number to start multihoming. Since he's pretty new to 
routing and policies of RIPE and managing the database to keep things 
going, we as LIR offered him to do this for him at the startup phase. 
Currently he'll be hosting several services from within our PA ranges 
and will start growing his new resources in the PI space he wants.

After filling in the request forms, his AS got approved pending the PI 
/24 range assignment. And that's been a process that's currently 
becoming something ridiculous.

Initially I got some return questions on how the subnets would be sliced 
up, what would be used for management of the routers, if IP's are being 
assigned statically or dynamically, how much IP's a customer would use 
and if PA space is being returned. Questions (except for the 'how much 
IP's will a customer use') I can understand and all answered.

Then in a follow-up I got asked what the montly growth is, who's 
administratively responsible for the IP's and how they're going to be 
used on the servers.

Then in a next follow up I got pointed to using PA space either from us 
or a different provider or that the customer should become LIR himself 
since we as LIR cannot sub-allocate PI space. (something that's not 
intended in the first place at all, we just administer it on a contract 
base until he understands procedures)

And then after explaining that we will only help the customer on 
contract base and not sub-allocate anything, another follow-up comes 
that no customer can use more then 1 or 2 IP's and once again a question 
on how many servers are involved here.

And that's where I'm at now. I've been trying to request PI space for 
our customer since last friday, and in my opinion there's too much 
meddling into internal business by RIPE here and this is taking a 
ridiculous amount of time and communication.

As a LIR we hand out IP space responsibly to our customers, for a good 
technical and administrative reason we have a customer who wants his own 
PI assignment and I'm asking him questions about his business that lean 
towards a company secret. In my opinion RIPE has absolutely no business 
in asking how many customers and/or servers someone has and stating that 
a customer can not use >2 IP's in that PI space (what if someone has 
*gasp* 3 SSL websites ?, I cannot imagine that happening.., ever).

Also neither we or our customer has a crystal ball to see in the future, 
so sure I can tell the amount of customer growth I'll be expecting or 
HOPING to see, but come on.

I know IPv4 space must be handed out responsibly, but this is seriously 
going too far, especially for a LIR. Supposedly I cannot give a 
routing-reason for requesting PI space, but part of that IS important on 
why I'm requesting it. It's really not desirable for us AND for my 
customer to chop out a part of my PA space and announce in smaller 
chunks from his own AS on the same exchange points we're on and this 
customer is NOT at the stage yet to become a full LIR himself.


-- 

Met vriendelijke groet,

Jeroen Wunnink,
EasyHosting B.V. Systeembeheerder
systeembeheer at easyhosting.nl

telefoon:+31 (035) 6285455              Postbus 48
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