static verification methods

Hello all,

At the Local IR working group at RIPE 32, the issue was raised about
changing the policy for applying verification methods to cable
connections. Here is our proposal on how to change this policy.

First some background: A few years ago, the IANA asked the Regional
Registries to keep an eye on "very small assignments to
individuals". This means cases like static dial-up where a registry
has to use one IP address per dial-up customer. Since these kinds of
assignments could potentially use up a lot of address space, it was
decided to strongly discourage using static addresses for this and
that that we should monitor these assignments more closely. To do
this, any Local Registry that assigns a lot of addresses for this
purpose (more than 1024 addresses), was requested that they would have
to enter each of these customers in the database individually (as is
the case with all assignments to end-users). Later when some Local
Registries had a problem with entering all their dial-up customers in
the database for confidentiality problems, it was decided to add an
alternative method that they could instead send us a weekly report
showing the customers they added that week. This is so that the
Regional Registries could still keep track of these kinds of
assignments.

In the last few years, more and more technologies have come along that
fall under this procedure. Aside from static dial-up, other services
such as web hosting (when not using http 1.1), cable connections, ADSL
connections, some ISDN connections, etc.. often need to assign one IP
address per customer. In many of these cases, using one IP address per
customer is necessary because the host is usually permanently
connected to the Internet.

The issue was raised that applying these verification methods to
technologies that are permanently connected to the Internet and need
one IP address per customer, is too cumbersome and adds a lot of extra
administrative overhead for the provider. We also realise that there 
are inconsistencies between the Regional Registries in dealing with 
these technologies.

For these reasons, we would like to change the policy and make a 
distinction between technologies that are usually connected to the 
Internet permanently
and those that are connected only temporarily. Here is the proposal for 
the new policy, please give us your comments by the end of next week.

Permanently online:

This includes technologies such as cable, ADSL, and various server
(web, ftp, etc..) connections that are usually permanently
connected to the Internet. It can also include analogue or digital
(ISDN) dial-up connections if they are used for a service that needs
to be permanently online and for services like dial-out on demand.

For most of these connections, you need to assign one IP address per
connection, even if using DHCP (which we recommend because it makes
renumbering easier). We propose to change the policy and to not apply
the verification methods to these types of connections.

For these technologies, we still need to keep track of the amounts of
addresses being assigned, however we would do this whenever the
customer requests a new assignment for this purpose. Since these
services are permanently connected to the Internet, we will probe
these addresses to verify whether the assigned addresses really are in
use. It must therefore be made clear to the RIPE NCC exactly which
block of IP addresses is used for this purpose. We would expect to see
that a high percentage are reachable. We might at this point request
additional information to show that they have really used the
addresses that were assigned for this purpose in the past- this could
be in the form of a list of all URLs assigned, their DNS records,
config files, etc.. something to show that the IP addresses are all in
use.

Virtual web hosting is the only one that has an alternative available
(http 1.1) that would allow assigning one IP address for several
hosts. Since we want to encourage that people use http 1.1, we propose
to continue applying the special verification methods to virtual web
hosting that doesn't use http 1.1.

Temporarily online:

This includes technologies that only need to be connected to the
Internet temporarily, such as most telephone dial-up connections. We
recommend the use of DHCP and assigning IP addresses based on the
number of modem ports. We will therefore continue to apply the special
verification methods to any organisation that assigns IP addresses
based on the number of customers instead.