Getting an AS and /18

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

I have a customer that is a cable modem provider. They submitted the
form to request an AS and some address space. The response from ARIN
wanted a ton of documentation. I understand why ARIN requires all of
the documentation. Does ARIN require a ton of SWIPS be present for the
customer before they will issue address space? This customer genuinely
needs the address space but doesn't have the time to gather up all the
information that is 'required'. Does anyone know of a person they can
talk to at ARIN to help with this process?

-Andy Ellifson

2

I have a customer that is a cable modem provider. They submitted the
form to request an AS and some address space. The response from ARIN
wanted a ton of documentation. I understand why ARIN requires all of
the documentation. Does ARIN require a ton of SWIPS be present for the
customer before they will issue address space? This customer genuinely
needs the address space but doesn't have the time to gather up all the
information that is 'required'. Does anyone know of a person they can
talk to at ARIN to help with this process?

You're seriously arguing that the customer should get special
consideration because they don't have time to put together and present the
required documentation necessary for ARIN to determine that an allocation
is justified?

Talk about chutzpah...

Re: SWIPs. Your question was a bit vague, but if you're asking if the
address space your customer is currently using needs to be SWIPed to
them (or demonstrated in some sort of public WHOIS database), yes. If
you're referring to something else, you'll have to be more detailed in
your question.

/david

3

Have them setup an rwhois server. That's how we proved allocation.

4

I suspect this is a troll. However, I'll take the bait...

Why should this organization get any sort of special treatment? Because they
have been too slack to properly SWIP their blocks? Because they don't feel
like submitting the proper documentation?

You posit that the customer genuinely needs the address space. How do we, as
an Internet community discover that? The only way is documentation.

I find it rather hard to believe that an organization without an AS,
qualifies for a /18, based on the published criteria - they did take the
time to read those, right?

Andy, you request help to circumvent a process that is far from perfect, yet
is our best hedge against the unscrupulous. I suppose the best advise for
them is to hire a consultant who is fully conversant in the procedures for
obtaining address spaces and an AS number. That's their best bet.

- Daniel Golding

5

So re-reading Andy's post, I think people have misread it - he doesn't
appear to be asking for help in circumventing ARIN's procedures, he wants
help in following it, if one notes the actual questions he asks:

> Does ARIN require a ton of SWIPS be present for the customer before
> they will issue address space?

> Does anyone know of a person they can talk to at ARIN to help with
> this process?

But that's just my take on it.

6

So re-reading Andy's post, I think people have misread it - he doesn't
appear to be asking for help in circumventing ARIN's procedures, he wants
help in following it, if one notes the actual questions he asks:

> > Does ARIN require a ton of SWIPS be present for the customer before
> > they will issue address space?

As best I can tell, there are three answers to this vague question:

(1) Your existing address space (assigned to you from your upstream[s])
must be SWIPed to you.

(2) The address space you have assigned to your cable head-ends must
be SWIPed in ARIN"s WHOIS database. This is a special requirement for
cable operators.

(3) Address space you have assigned downstream for non-cable operations
must be SWIPed.

> > Does anyone know of a person they can talk to at ARIN to help with
> > this process?

Well, I took it the other way, because the Registration Services Helpdesk
at ARIN is very accessible, and generally speaking, the analysts who
answer the phones are happy to help you understand the policies and answer
any questions you have. You don't need a 'special contact' to be
successful with ARIN.

This operator should be able to accomplish his goals with ARIN simply by
working with the staff there in a cooperative effort to demonstrate
compliance with the applicable policies.

/david

7

Bob said it better than myself. I just want help compling with ARIN's
rules and justifications to get some address space for this customer.
When the documentation comes back wanting signed contracts, receipts
for the equipment, SWIP information......... and so on... It seems like
a daunting task.

I nor the customer have never been through this before. I just wanted
to get input from someone that has gone through it before. I certainly
wouldn't want ARIN handing out a /18 to a business that will never
utilize it. I understand why the rules and justifications are in
place.

8

Andy,
I just went through all this myself. I'm not a cable modem provider, so
the rules may be slightly different.

In the beginning, I had SWIP'd records. However, as most net admins, I
had fallen way behind on this. Here's what I did to rectify my problem:

a) Created a spreadsheet listing parent CIDR delgations from our
upstream. Broke those out into subnets that we delegate to customers,
ping scan them periodically, and get a max utilization. Sum your total
current space and max usage, get a percentage. So long as the company
holds 1 ip over a /19, they are eligible for a /18 AFAIK.

b) Apply for an ASN at this point. Tell ARIN you are going to be
multihoming, and can provide signed contracts with ISP's proving this.
Without multihoming, you don't need an ASN -- your upstream should be
more than happy to announce your address space for you later on.

c) Take all that spreadsheet data, and throw it into an rwhois server.
For a /20 worth of addresses, this took me the better part of 3-4 days
of data entry. I would expect it would take one person 12-16 days for a
/18 worth of addresses. Need it faster? Throw more people at data
entry.

d) Get your rwhoisd server up and running. By this time, you should
have your ASN number (took us about 1 week). Fill out the IPv4 request
template. Send it in. After a day or two, they'll email you back
asking you a few things about your policies on how you decide how many
IP's a customer gets. I think that they just want to hear the policies
that they have on their website (i.e. target 80% utilization within 3
months). 1 week later you should have an allocation.

e) Start migrating stuff over. When you make delegations in your new
/18, put them in your rwhois server. You'll need it when you go back to
ask for more address space in a year, and why go through all this stress
more than once.

If they give you grief about a /18, ask for a /19 and ask them to
"reserve" the other /19 space within a /18. Prove to them that you are
effectively utilizing the /19 and they'll probably give/sell you the
other half.

Someone else here mentioned that the folks at ARIN are truly helpful --
They are. I emailed them a few times asking for clarification on some
of the forms, and I had answers within the hour.

My $0.02, and I just turned up my ASN and my netblock today!

9

Please understand that the rules are different for cable providers.
They are required to SWIP only to their head-ends, but it must be
SWIP, not RWHOIS. This is typically a small number of SWIPs, as
you SWIP out to geographically-central head-ends.

/david

10

[ On Monday, July 2, 2001 at 20:59:49 (-0500), Marius Strom wrote: ]

Subject: Re: Getting an AS and /18

c) Take all that spreadsheet data, and throw it into an rwhois server.
For a /20 worth of addresses, this took me the better part of 3-4 days
of data entry. I would expect it would take one person 12-16 days for a
/18 worth of addresses. Need it faster? Throw more people at data
entry.

This "spreadsheet" and "data-entry" stuff seems like the wrong way to go
about things!

Using a spreadsheet to split out subnet lists seems like way-over-kill.
Don't you already have routing tables or other configuration data that
lists all this stuff somewhere?

As for needing to do data-entry, well all the data comes from computers
in the first place. It should only take a competent programmer a day or
two at most, and maybe even just an hour or two at best, to hack together
something to manipulate it from one form to another as required.

11

...and while we're on the subject of SWIPs, can I get a pet peeve off my
chest - the fact that RADB entries are updated in minutes, yet it takes
typically 24 hours or more for a SWIP database change to show up in the
servers (and the next day to even determine that the change was accepted
by the servers)? Is there any real reason for ARIN to not be able to
update the database in near-real-time?

12

Speaking of ....

What IS going on with rwhois? I heard some talk at the SF ARIN meeting
about enhancing the rwhois code and making it more workable for ISPs.
IMHO - SWIP is a generally inferior system ... at least to the potential
of using rwhois. The real leverage comes if it can be integrated into
larger distributed database systems.

Maintaining delegation information is a pain. Having valid delegation
of IP address space helps in tracking the guys with black hats.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to develop a mechanism to limit views
of contact information to valid ASN POCs via some form of keyed access
... since those who work in the AS/BGP space need to know who to contact
as the source of packet, as apposed to marketing organizations.

Are the registries going to actively work to extend and enhance
rwhois?

13

Not fair toward the general public. Besides those wearing hats of many
colors and marketing interests, there are many legitimate uses of this
information. Why hide such data anyway? Imagine the public outcry.

Also to be considered are foreign registries (i.e., APNIC), and the data
they provide. One may expect consistency...

--Mitch
NetSide

14

Not fair toward the general public. Besides those wearing hats of many
colors and marketing interests, there are many legitimate uses of this
information. Why hide such data anyway?

because the major use of the whois data has become spam

randy

15

You mean spammers are so stupid as not to know that spamming a network
POC is the quickest way to account oblivion? If anything, I thought they
weed out such addresses from their lists...

--Mitch
NetSide

16

[snip]

What IS going on with rwhois? I heard some talk at the SF ARIN meeting
about enhancing the rwhois code and making it more workable for ISPs.
IMHO - SWIP is a generally inferior system ... at least to the potential
of using rwhois. The real leverage comes if it can be integrated into
larger distributed database systems.

[snip]

Traffic on the DBWG list is light (I'm just as guilty of not enough time
as other people on the list). The last thread involved making the ARIN
IRR actually useful, swip/whois/IRR-like models, etc. I'd encourage
those of us in the ARIN region to be involved in makingthe wheezing
steam-engines better. http://www.arin.net/governance/workgroups.htm#da
says:
"The Database Implementation Working Group was formed to discuss problems
with existing database systems and how to address them."

Cheers,

Joe

17

Not judging by the amount of spam that's caught by the filters here... as well as the amount that gets through.

18

There's a lot of spammers out there that just fell out of a tree and haven't
learned that 'ietf@ietf.org' is not a good target... :wink:

19

Yo Randy!

That may be, but I still need valid whois data to track down network
problems in progress. I use whois many times a day for this and bad
data just makes net management a lot harder.

RGDS
GARY

20

Instead of keeping e-mail addresses in WHOIS, why not just keep a URL that
(theoretically) has up-to-date contact information. This would allow the
organization to publish whatever e-mail addresses they wanted to, as well as
solving the problem of spammers walking the db. A web page should be just as
easy (if not easier) to keep up to date than WHOIS data.

--Adam