[ga] "Louis Touton for the IANA"

["Jim Fleming" <jfleming@anet.com>]

-----Original Message----- 
From: Richard Jimmerson [mailto:richardj@arin.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 4:12 AM 
To: ac-coord@aso.icann.org 
Cc: touton@icann.org 
Subject: RE: [AC-COORD] 24/8 Draft 



Hello All, 
  
I had not yet seen comments from anyone regarding this document, 
so I thought I'd make a few... I think Louis does a great job 
of describing the background of the Cable IP address space. I 
also agree with the recommendations listed at the end, of course. 
  
Does everyone consider this to be an administrative transfer of 
authority for 24/8? 
  
Are there any objections to ARIN assuming authority over this 
block? ARIN currently manages in-addr.arpa for registrations in 
this /8 and would simply work toward allocating the remaining 20% 
of the block by satisfying upcoming requests from cable providers. 
  
Your comments are welcomed. :) 
  
-Richard Jimmerson 
  


-----Original Message----- 
From: owner-ac-coord@lists.aso.icann.org [mailto:owner-ac- 
coord@lists.aso.icann.org]On Behalf Of Louis Touton 
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 1:32 PM 
To: ac-coord@aso.icann.org 
Subject: [AC-COORD] 24/8 Draft 




DRAFT OF 27 October 2000 





REVISION OF ASSIGNMENT PROCEDURES FOR IP ADDRESS SPACE FOR THE CABLE 
TELEVISION INDUSTRY 



Background 


In the first part of 1996, early commercial efforts to deploy cable-modem 
technology encountered difficulties, primarily at the InterNIC, with the 
then-existing IP-address assignment guidelines. One difficulty was that, 
to justify the investment needed to deploy Internet distribution on cable 
systems (including upgrade of cable systems to Internet distribution), the 
early cable ventures required assignments/reservations larger than 
generally available under the then-existing InterNIC assignment guidelines. 
As a result, a number of denials of requests for assignments to cable 
operators were appealed to the IANA under section 6 of RFC 2050. 


In response, in March 1996 the IANA designated the 24.0.0.0/8 address space 
for use by Internet service providers using cable television technology to 
provision Internet service. The IANA's initial plan was to create a 
special registry, defined by industry rather than geography. This was 
described in a 3 March 1996 message sent by Jon Postel to the RIRs: 


Hi. 


Paul Mockapetris and i had a long conversation about the allocation of IP 
address space to the cable TV industry in light of the very likely rapid 
growth of the provisioning of IP service by that industry through the use 
of cable modems and similar devices to allow anything from a "set top box" 
through a full function server (such as a web server) to be attached to a 
cable system at up to perhaps 10Mbps data rates in each direction. 


I was persuaded that it would be reasonable to allocate a block of address 
space to be used by the cable TV industry for this purpose. 


The idea is that a special resistry would be established for the cable TV 
industry and that all service providers using cable TV technology to 
provision Internet service would be asked to get their address blocks from 
that registry. 


Toward that end the 24/8 block is designated as the address space to be 
used for this purpose, and an initial allocation to the "@ Home" company 
has been made from this block. 


Requests for address space from other service providers that are primarily 
provisioned by cable TV technology should be referred to the IANA for 
allocation from this address block until the special registry is 
established. 


--jon. 


This plan to establish a subject-matter IR was never completed. Instead, 
arrangements were made for the Regional IRs to receive requests for cable- 
television-related uses, to verify the applicants' demonstrations of need, 
and to pass on the requests on to the IANA for assignment from 24/8. 


Under these arrangements, which are still in use today, the IANA receives 
the need-verified requests, locates a suitable block within 24/8 for 
assignment, and communicates the assignment details to the submitting RIR 
so that they may be forwarded on to the applicant. The IANA's role is 
limited to implementing the assignment strategy within 24/8 to meet the RIR 
requests. 


Although 24/8 IP addresses have been available to all three RIRs under 
these procedures, in practice the procedure has been used predominantly by 
ARIN, with APNIC and RIPE NCC not having used the process for some time. 
Of the 3121 /20s that have been assigned in 24/8, only 80 have been 
assigned within the RIPE NCC region and 128 in the APNIC region. 


The 24/8 block is assigned using a slow-start reservation strategy. When 
the IANA makes an assignment, at the RIR's request adjacent blocks will be 
reserved for future assignment to the applicant, so that aggregation 
opportunities are maximized. 


Assignments and reservations are made in block sizes that range from /13 to 
/20. The assignments in the 24/8 now consume over 75% of the total 
available space, as shown below: 






Size 


Assigned 


Reserved 


Free 


Total 


/13 


4 


0 


0 


4 



/14 


25 


0 


12 


37 



/15 


1 


1 


0 


2 



/16 


58 


0 


4 


62 



/17 


3 


3 


0 


6 



/18 


4 


12 


0 


16 



/19 


3 


13 


0 


16 



/20 


3 


13 


0 


16 



Total (/20s) 


3121 


143 


832 


4096 


         
76.20% 


3.49% 


20.31% 


100.00% 




As the block has filled up, assignments have become increasingly difficult. 
Approximately two months ago, the IANA for the first time was unable to 
fill a request out of the block when ARIN requested a /12 that could not be 
provided from unfragmented space. 




  




Discussion 


The 1996 initiative to allocate IP addresses through channels other than 
the RIRs was originally intended to solve a bootstrap problem potentially 
preventing cable modem rollout. At the time, the InterNIC did not have 
policies that were well suited to the business needs for large blocks of 
available IP addresses by potential entrants into the business of cable 
distribution of Internet services, in view of those entrant's lack of 
established history of usage. These policies resulted in RFC 2050 appeals 
to the IANA, which were addressed by setting aside 24/8 for assignment to 
this infant industry under assignment rules that were more suited to it. 


Whatever the merits of the 1996 initiative (which was controversial at the 
time), the conditions that led to it have long since ceased to exist. ARIN 
has adopted specific policies for cable address assignments 
<http://www.arin.net/regserv/initial-isp.html> and, since the IANA now 
simply relies on ARIN's recommendations on requests forwarded to the IANA, 
the IANA's administration of the 24/8 assignments no longer results in a 
more liberal assignment policy being applied to cable applications. The 
lack of requests to the IANA from the APNIC and RIPE NCC regions indicate 
that there is no current problem with the policies of those RIRs as applied 
to requests for IP addresses for cable system uses. 


  


Recommendations 


1. The IANA staff recommends that address policy be changed to shift the 
handling of requests for IP-address assignments for cable-system uses 
entirely to the RIR staffs. RIRs should make these assignments out of the 
IP address blocks they have been allocated by the IANA. The allocation of 
assignment responsibilities between RIRs and NIRs/LIRs should be decided by 
each RIR within its existing policy process. 


2. Administrative responsibility for 24/8 should be shifted from the IANA 
to ARIN. An approach to deal with the relatively small (7%) amount of 
space allocated to users outside ARIN's region should be developed in 
connection with the overall rationalization of responsibilities currently 
going on among the RIRs. Until rationalization, however, all of 24/8 
should be administered by ARIN. 


3. The question of whether cable-industry needs should be met by the RIRs 
through assignments from blocks segregated from those used to meet other 
needs should be addressed, at least in the first instance, within the 
regional policy-development processes. It is possible that cable operators 
will desire a more uniform policy globally. There are also some arguments 
that future reclamation/consolidation efforts might be simplified by making 
all cable assignments from segregated blocks. The issue, however, does not 
seem as pressing as others that merit the more immediate attention of the 
global-address-policy development process. 


Louis Touton 
for the IANA 



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