IP Address News

Providing you with a single site about IP Addresses News and Usage

IP Address News - Providing you with a single site about IP Addresses News and Usage

Vint Cerf doodles about ICANN and the IANA transition

Google has released a Doodle video animation with Vint Cerf  explaining basic DNS and IP address management of the Internet, the formation of ICANN, and the IANA transition.

It is a fun little video and certainly makes the whole issue seem very simple.  Unfortunately, real life isn’t that simple.  There is a lot at stake with the control of the unique identifiers on the Internet.  There is lots of history and politics going on behind the scenes with these changes in the Internet governance structure and how DNS, IP addresses, and other aspects of the Internet are managed.

LacNIC exhausts IPv4 free pool

LacNIC announced today that they have reached the equivalent of a /10 remaining in their free pool and have stopped regular allocations of IPv4 addresses to organizations in their region.  Organizations will now only receive a single /24 to /22 of address space every 6 months until the pool reaches a /11.  After the pool reaches a /11 only new members to LacNIC may receive a single /24 to /22.

No more IPv4 addresses in Latin America and the Caribbean

NANOG 61 & IPv6

A number of talks at NANOG 61 this week included some updates on IPv6 deployments.  The links below will take you to presentations and also video of the speakers.

 

Akamai produces a security report annually and in their report this year they noted have seen a 10x increase in IPv6 traffic compared with the year before.

2013 Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report

 

T-mobile described their IPv6 deployment for handsets particularly noting how all of their Android 4.3+ handsets are now IPv6 only using 464XLAT as the transition technology back to the IPv4 Internet.  8 million of their 49 million subscribers are now largely using IPv6 only.  Furthermore, they report that 27% of their traffic is IPv6 and that 50% of the traffic from these 8 million handsets is completely IPv6 without any translation to the IPv4 world.

464XLAT: Breaking Free of IPv4

 

I also found these talks quite interesting, but aren’t related directly to addressing issues.

NANOG 61 PPC Recommended Draft Policy review

NANOG 61 wrapped up yesterday in Bellevue, Washington.  It is always different attending a conference in your home town; this was also the largest NANOG ever.  On Tuesday morning, ARIN held a public policy consultation.  Since I didn’t get a preview out before the meeting, here is my review of the discussion around the recommended draft policies.

2013-8 Subsequent Allocations for New Multiple Discrete Networks

Policy Summary: This recommended draft policy fixes an issue with the current policy which was highlighted by ARIN staff at an meeting last year.  This policy describes how ARIN should allocate blocks for new sites for organizations which use the multiple discrete networks policy.

Discussion: Previous issues in the policy draft centered around how ARIN should test if/when a site should receive an allocation.  The new text uses the phrase “has shown evidence of deployment.”  There have been no negative comments about this new text and I suspect the AC will move this policy toward last call at their next meeting.

2014-5 Remove 7.2 Lame Delegations

Policy Summary: This recommended draft policy removes section 7.2 which was formerly used when ARIN was conducting DNS lame delegation testing.

Review: This policy has not been in use for some time and the current policy carries some risk to operational DNS should it be implemented as currently written. Furthermore, the operator community has not asked ARIN to reinstate this monitoring service.  I believe consensus has been achieved on this policy and it will move forward to last call.

2014-12 Anti-hijack Policy

Policy Summary: This recommended draft policy adds language to the experimental allocation policy to restrict overlapping assignments.  This policy was created after multiple RIRs allowed an IPv6 research project to proceed by allowing an organization to obtain letters of agency permitting them to use overlapping address blocks.  ARIN has acknowledged that this action was a mistake and will not grant similar permission in the future.

Review:  This policy has been widely supported by the Internet operator community since its introduction.  Some editorial changes were made to the policy just prior to the meeting and the AC must discuss those changes to make sure they do not change the intent of the policy when it was previously moved to its current recommended state.  It seems likely that this policy will also be advanced to last call.

2014-13 Reduce All Minimum Allocation/Assignment Units to /24

Policy Summary: This recommended draft policy changes changes the minimum IPv4 allocation size to a /24 for both ISPs and end users.  This policy was rushed through the policy development process after a few organizations reported that their upstreams would not assign them /24 address blocks and they also could not qualify for an address block under current IPv4 policies.  This policy also fixes issues that ARIN staff highlighted with the shortly upcoming exhaustion of ARIN’s IPv4 free pool.

Review:  While the textual changes of this policy ended up being more complicated that many hoped, I believe the issue which triggered this policy draft will be resolved by this policy and that the additional simplification will also be beneficial.  The staff review raised an issue about the maximum initial allocation size for new entrants.  Current ARIN practice relies on a set of examples which are being removed by this update.  Some discussion was considered about adding an initial maximum, but no agreement could be made on those changes.  In the end, I suspect ARIN will continue with their current practice for block sizing, but an actual maximum would not be enumerated in policy.  I believe this policy will be advanced to last call by the advisory council shortly.

LacNIC reaches /9, triggering IANA reclaimed block distribution

On May 20th, LacNIC announced that it has reached the equivalent of a /9 remaining in its IPv4 free pool which has triggered the IANA to invoke its reclaimed IPv4 address space policy.  The IANA received a number of blocks from various RIRs under the reclaimed policy over the years.  Under the global policy for reclaimed blocks, each RIR is allocated 1/5th of the total pool.  Now that the first initial allocation has been made the IANA reclaimed free pool will be reevaluated every six months and appropriate distributions will then be made to each RIR.

LacNIC received the block (45.160.0.0/11) and will continue with its current allocation policies with some additional scrutiny until the free pool reaches a equivalent of a /10, then only blocks between /22 and /24 will be allocated.

APNIC has subsequently announced that they have received a /11 equivalent from the IANA as part of the reclaimed distribution.  Under APNIC policies, each APNIC member is eligible to receive up to a /22 of additional IPv4 address space from this specific block.

RIPE has sent an email to its member list which notes it has received 45.128.0.0/11 from IANA and has added this block to its free pool.  Under the current RIPE policy each LIR can receive a single /22 block.

ARIN has not yet announced that they have received an additional block, but the IANA registry notes they have received 45.32.0.0/11.  As ARIN does not have a specific policy for this block so it should be added to the available free pool.  ARIN’s current pool lists 0.86 /8s equivalent remaining on May 21st.

I have introduced a policy proposal (ARIN-2014-16) to the ARIN region which would designated IANA reclaimed blocks to be allocated under an austerity policy, but this policy is currently in only at the draft stage of discussion on the public policy mailing list.