nanog mailing list archives

Re: IPv4 Legacy assignment frustration


From: Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2016 10:40:39 -0500 (CDT)

<3 name and shame. 




----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 



Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 


----- Original Message -----

From: "Tom Smyth" <tom.smyth () wirelessconnect eu> 
To: "Ray Soucy" <rps () maine edu> 
Cc: nanog () nanog org 
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2016 10:23:39 AM 
Subject: Re: IPv4 Legacy assignment frustration 

Hi Ray, Kraig 
I think people affected just have to try to put pressure on their isps in 
the path between the afffected ips and hope for the best... public pressure 
is probably the only way to get around what I think most of us would agree 
is a terrible practice... I really hope that we can get rid of this 
practice as the last crumbs of IPv4 are carved up and re-distributed 
amongst new and growing isps. 

perhaps a name and shame project to highlight those isps that block ip 
ranges constantly and indiscriminately, 
needless to say the impact such practice has on peoples freedom to 
communicate, 

Thanks 

Tom Smyth 



On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 4:09 PM, Ray Soucy <rps () maine edu> wrote: 

Regardless of whether or not people "should" do this, I think the horse has 
already left the barn on this one. I don't see any way of getting people 
who decided to filter all of APNIC to make changes. Most of them are 
static configurations that they'll never look to update. 

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Kraig Beahn <kraig () enguity com> wrote: 

The following might add some clarity, depending upon how you look at it: 

We, as "core" engineers know better than to use some of the sources 
listed 
below, tho, my suspicion is that when an engineer or local IT person, on 
an 
edge network starts to see various types of attacks, they play 
wack-a-mole, 
based upon outdated or incomplete data, and never think twice about 
revisiting such, as, from their perspective, everything is working just 
fine. 

In a networking psychology test, earlier this morning, I wrote to ten 
well-known colleagues that I was fairly confident didn't regularly follow 
the nanog lists. Such individuals comprised of IP and IT engineers for 
which manage various network sizes and enterprises, ultimately posing the 
question of "Where in the world is 150.201.15.7, as we were researching 
some unique traffic patterns". 

*Seven out of ten came back with overseas*. Two came back with more 
questions "as the address space appeared to be assigned to APNIC", but 
was 
routed domestically. 

*One came back with the correct response.* (MORENET) 

Two of the queried parties were representative of major networks, one for 
an entire state governmental network with hundreds of thousands of actual 
users and tens of thousands of routers, the other from another major 
university. (Names left out, in the event they see this message later in 
the day or week) 

After probing the origin of their responses, I found the following 
methods 
or data-sources were used: 

-Search Engines - by far, the worst offender. Not necessarily "the 
engines" 
at fault, but a result of indexed sites containing inaccurate or outdated 
CIDR lists. 
-User generated forums, such as "Block non-North American Traffic for 
Dummies Like Me 
<https://www.webmasterworld.com/search_engine_spiders/4663915-2-30.htm>" 
(Yes - that's the actual thread name on WebMasterWorld.com, from a Sr. 
Member) 
-Static (or aged) CIDR web-page based lists, usually placed for 
advertorial 
generation purposes and rarely up to date or accurate. (usually via SE's 
or 
forum referrals) 
-APNIC themselves - A basic SE search resulted in an APNIC page 
< 

https://www.apnic.net/manage-ip/manage-historical-resources/erx-project/erx-ranges 

that, 
on it's face, appears to indicate 150.0.0.0/8 is in fact, part of the 
current APNIC range. 
-GitHub BGP Ranking tools: CIRCL / bgp-ranging example 
< 
https://github.com/CIRCL/bgp-ranking/blob/master/lib/db_init/ip_del_list> 
(last 
updated on May 16th, 2011, tho an RT lookup 
<http://bgpranking.circl.lu/ip_lookup?ip=150.201.15.7> via the CIRCL 
tool 
does shows the appropriate redirect/org) 
-Several routing oriented books and Cisco examples 
< 

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/integrated-intermediate-system-to-intermediate-system-is-is/13796-route-leak.pdf
 

list 
such range, for example, FR/ISBN 2-212-09238-5. 
-And even established ISPs, that are publically announcing their "block 
list 
<http://www.albury.net.au/netstatus/derouted.html>", such as Albury's 
Local 
ISP in Australia 

The simple answer is to point IT directors, IP engineers or "the 
receptionists that manages the network" to the appropriate registry 
data-source, which should convince them that corrective action is 
necessary, i.e. fix your routing table or firewall. The complexity begins 
in trying to locate all of these people and directing them to the 
appropriate data-source, which I think is an unrealistic task, even for 
the 
largest of operators. Maybe a nanog-edge group is in order. 

If the issue was beyond just a nuisance and If I were in your shoes, i'd 
renumber or use an alternate range for the types of traffic affected by 
such blocks, i.e. administrative web traffic trying to reach major 
insurance portals. (Looks like AS2572 is announcing just over 700k IPv4 
address, over about 43 ranges with only some potentially affected) 

Realizing that renumbering is also extremely unrealistic, if you haven't 
already reached the IPv6 bandwagon, that's an option or, if none of the 
above seem reasonable, you could always put together a one-page PDF that 
points these administrators to the appropriate resource to validate that 
you, are in fact, part of the domestic United States. 

I agree that a more accurate tool probably needs to be created for the 
"general population to consume," but then again, even that solution, is 
"just another tool" for the search-engines to index, and you're back at 
square one. 

As much as I think most of us would like to help fix this issue, I don't 
know that a decent, non-invasive solution exists, at least based upon the 
few hours we threw at this issue today... 

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 10:37 AM, Tony Finch <dot () dotat at> wrote: 

Spurling, Shannon <shannon () more net> wrote: 

It’s a problem with the miss-use of the RIR delegation of a legacy 
block. 

The assumption that because a block is assigned to a particular RIR, 
all 
users in that block have to be in that RIR’s territory, without 
actually 
running a query against that RIR’s Whois database. 

Actually, a simple whois query often isn't enough to solve this 
problem. 
Neither RIPE nor APNIC do proper whois referrals for IPv4 addresses 
that 
are registered in other RIRs. ARIN, however, does. 

(However, if the geoip people are using whois data, I can't believe 
they 
aren't handling cases like this properly, because it's blatantly 
obvious 
if you scan IPv4 address space for referrals.) 


If you use FreeBSD-CURRENT's whois client, it tries to work mostly by 
following referrals, rather than using a built-in database mapping 
query 
strings to whois servers. If you query for 150.199.0.0 (for example) 
you 
get the following (which I have brutally trimmed for length): 

% IANA WHOIS server 

refer: whois.apnic.net 

inetnum: 150.0.0.0 - 150.255.255.255 
organisation: Administered by APNIC 
status: LEGACY 

% [whois.apnic.net] 

inetnum: 150.0.0.0 - 150.255.255.255 
netname: ERX-NETBLOCK 
descr: Early registration addresses 

remarks: Address ranges from this historical space have now 
remarks: been transferred to the appropriate RIR 
database.remarks: 
remarks: If your search has returned this record, it means the 
remarks: address range is not administered by APNIC. 
remarks: 
remarks: Instead, please search one of the following databases: 

(It then unhelpfully lists all the other RIRs.) 

FreeBSD's whois client spots this failure then retries the query at 
ARIN. 


There's a similar problem with RIPE, for instance if you query for 
141.211.0.0: 

% IANA WHOIS server 

refer: whois.ripe.net 

inetnum: 141.0.0.0 - 141.255.255.255 
organisation: Administered by RIPE NCC 
status: LEGACY 

% This is the RIPE Database query service. 

inetnum: 141.209.0.0 - 141.225.255.255 
netname: NON-RIPE-NCC-MANAGED-ADDRESS-BLOCK 
descr: IPv4 address block not managed by the RIPE NCC 

remarks: You can find the whois server to query, or the 
remarks: IANA registry to query on this web page: 
remarks: http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space 
remarks: 
remarks: You can access databases of other RIRs at: 

(It then unhelpfully lists all the other RIRs.) 

Actually RIPE is even worse than APNIC because it implicitly has a 
referral loop between IANA and RIPE. 


BUT NOTE! 

The APNIC and RIPE databases do in fact contain the referral 
information 
- 
you can get it via RDAP but not whois. Repeating the examples, 

$ curl -i https://rdap.apnic.net/ip/150.199.0.0 
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently 
Location: https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/150.199.0.0 

$ curl -i https://rdap.db.ripe.net/ip/141.211.0.0 
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently 
Location: https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/141.211.0.0 


Tony. 
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch <dot () dotat at> http://dotat.at/ - I xn--zr8h 
punycode 
Biscay: Cyclonic becoming mainly northwest, 4 or 5. Moderate. Fog 
patches, 
thundery showers. Moderate, occasionally very poor. 




-- 




-- 
Ray Patrick Soucy 
Senior Cyber Security Engineer 
Networkmaine, University of Maine System US:IT 

207-561-3526 




-- 
Kindest regards, 
Tom Smyth 

Mobile: +353 87 6193172 
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