Re: ARIN IP allocation questionn

[David Schwartz <davids () webmaster com>]

> My *personal* opinion is that wise ISPs only punt customers to ARIN once
> they reach the point where they can, in fact, have a normal ARIN netblock
> assigned directly to them (currently a /20, unless I slept through another
> change...)

        The guidelines have a strong preference for singly-homed networks to use IP
address space allocated to them from their upstreams. I can think of no
logical reason* an ISP would prefer their customers to go to ARIN rather than
deal with them. The global routing table is better off for it as well, as the
customer's /20 would be a new route, rather than being included in their
provider's presumably larger block.

        On the other hand, I can think of many reasons a customer would prefer to
deal with ARIN than their upstream, assuming the meager cost wasn't a factor
and they don't mind polluting the global table a tad. Of course, that's not
really an operational issue.

        DS

        * The only reason I could possibly think of is if the ISP is afraid that the
large allocation will impact their future allocations because they don't have
the confidence or competence to extract a proper justification from their
customer and present/defend that justification to ARIN when their next
allocation comes up. But this wasn't the reason you were thinking of, right?