Re: Will a single /27 get fully routed these days?

[David Conrad <drc () virtualized org>]

On Jan 26, 2014, at 11:45 AM, John Levine <johnl () iecc com> wrote:
> > I wonder what will change (if anything) when ARIN runs out of IPv4 space.
> The market in used IPv4 space will come out from the shadows,

It mostly has already done so in the APNIC and RIPE regions out of necessity.

> and we'll see endless arguments between
> buyers of IPv4 space and ARIN, when ARIN refuses the updates to the
> address registry.

This would be "bad". I can think of few more effective ways of destroying the RIR system than by refusing to update the 
address registry. IMHO, the primary function of the Registries is to, you know, register. Not act as policy police, 
particularly of policies defined by a handful of folks who bother to participate in the ARIN public policy processes.

> I don't see any reason for the people who run defaultless routers all over the world to change the /24 rule.  

So IIUC, the theory goes that ISPs will be encouraged by their customers (upon pain of those customers becoming former 
customers) to announce their long prefixes, even though the ISPs will say "but nobody will listen".  However, some ISPs 
_do_ listen (or rather, _don't_ filter) so the long prefix customers will get partial (i.e., worse than normal) 
reachability. Said customers will then whine at their ISPs saying "fix it!" and said ISPs will go to their peers and 
grovel, perhaps offering the Faustian bargain of "I'll accept yours if you accept mine and our respective customers 
will stop whining at us about each other". And then the apocalypse occurs. Or something like that.

Regards,
-drc

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