Re: Allocation of IP Addresses

[Michael Dillon <michael () memra com>]

On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, David R. Conrad wrote:

> > Here's an idea. Let new ISP's reserve large blocks (say /16's) in 65/8,
> > 66/8, .... but don't let them actually use these addresses on the global 
> > Internet. Then, the ISP can run a Network Address Translation gateway and
>
> Why not use net 10 and leave the NATs in?

Indeed! RFC1918 addresses work fine for me on my LAN at home and this 
week I will be connecting a corporate LAN also using RFC1918 addresses
behind a single static IP address. In both cases I am using a FreeBSD box 
with proxies like CERN httpd and TIS Firewall Toolkit to transfer the 
traffic rather than a full-blown NAT. 

More ISP's should be doing this IMHO.

> > I think that the fundamental problem here is that the Internic is 
> > fundamentally clueless about important issues such as global routing 
>
> Bullshit.  The InterNIC is very much aware of global routing issues.

Then why have they not yet come up with a workable policy like the one 
RIPE uses to release /16 blocks incrementally to new ISP's?

> > and *BUSINESS* issues. 
>
> What business issues are you talking about?

Basically, the market demand is INCREDIBLY HIGH and businesses want to 
build up infrastructure to meet this demand but the Internic IP address 
allocation procedures are too confusing and take too long.

> keep the Internet from partitioning) want.  But, both sides are more
> than happy to scream and whine at the registries for not doing the
> "right" thing.

I wonder if the main problem isn't simply that not enough people know how 
to have an impact on Internet policy as expressed in the RFC's. A heck of 
a lot of people starting ISP's have backgrounds in business, LAN's and BBS 
operation but they just don't know how the Internet works or where they 
can comment on Internet policy. *sigh*

> The US government agency could get out of the way, but the squeals of
> outrage when InterNIC started charging US $50/year for domain name
> registrations leads me to believe it will be a while before any sort of
> rational allocation policy can be imposed.

Those squeals disappeared darn fast!

Michael Dillon                                    Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Memra Software Inc.                                 Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com                             E-mail: michael () memra com