Is it permissible, from a policy perspective, for a multi-homed end user
to announce the numbering resource allocation received from one RIR (for
discussion purposes, let's say ARIN) to upstream service providers in a
different region (for example, in the RIPE region)?
Is it feasible from a practical perspective?
I've looked through IANA and ARIN policy and can't find anything which
covers such a scenario. I have seen some things about transferring
number resources from one RIR to another RIR, which is similar, but not
exactly the same.
Rationale:
Suppose you are a large global enterprise, truly globalized in practice,
not in mere name, and performance concerns aside, you provide failover
for Internet access of enterprise users in one region by failing over to
internet access in a different region. Since you probably are using
10/8 addressing within your network and you NAT the private IPv4
addresses to a public IPv4 address before sending the traffic on.., so
this works. Given lack of NAT66, and the best practice IPv6 numbering
which is purported to use globally routable IPv6 addresses within your
enterprise network, the achievable way to accomplish the same use
possible today in IPv4 would seem to be to advertise the IPv6 addressing
from one RIR to a ISP in a region governed by a different RIR (or LIR).
Nope. The RIR-police will shut you down.
Just kidding. I'm in ARIN's region and have a customer in Africa for whom we're announcing AFRINIC space. It happens. As long as you have authorization from the registrant (I'd say owner, but the RIR-semantics police would come for me) of the space, I wouldn't worry about utilizing "out of region" numbering resources.
This sort of thing probably happens quite a bit more than you'd guess...both legitmately and not.
In a message written on Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 02:59:31PM -0600, Crooks, Sam wrote:
Is it permissible, from a policy perspective, for a multi-homed end user
to announce the numbering resource allocation received from one RIR (for
discussion purposes, let's say ARIN) to upstream service providers in a
different region (for example, in the RIPE region)?
There are probably thousands if not tens of thousands of prefixes
announced in multiple regions, or even just different regions then
they were allocated. Perfectly normal.
"Crooks, Sam" <Sam.Crooks@experian.com> writes:
Is it permissible, from a policy perspective, for a multi-homed end user
to announce the numbering resource allocation received from one RIR (for
discussion purposes, let's say ARIN) to upstream service providers in a
different region (for example, in the RIPE region)?
Yes.
Is it feasible from a practical perspective?
Sure, people advertise prefixes allocated by ARIN in RIPE and APNIC
territory all the time. If that didn't work, multinational networks
wouldn't work so well would they?
I've looked through IANA and ARIN policy and can't find anything which
covers such a scenario. I have seen some things about transferring
number resources from one RIR to another RIR, which is similar, but not
exactly the same.
That's because the Internet is global in scope.
Suppose you are a large global enterprise, truly globalized in practice,
not in mere name, and performance concerns aside, you provide failover
for Internet access of enterprise users in one region by failing over to
internet access in a different region. Since you probably are using
10/8 addressing within your network and you NAT the private IPv4
addresses to a public IPv4 address before sending the traffic on.., so
this works. Given lack of NAT66, and the best practice IPv6 numbering
which is purported to use globally routable IPv6 addresses within your
enterprise network, the achievable way to accomplish the same use
possible today in IPv4 would seem to be to advertise the IPv6 addressing
from one RIR to a ISP in a region governed by a different RIR (or LIR).
I have worked for multiple companies where this (or something similar,
like anycast, multiple discrete networks, or even international pipes)
happens. No problemo.
-r
Is it permissible, from a policy perspective, for a multi-homed end user
to announce the numbering resource allocation received from one RIR (for
discussion purposes, let's say ARIN) to upstream service providers in a
different region (for example, in the RIPE region)?
Nope. The RIR-police will shut you down.
Mean, Jon. Mean. 
Just kidding. I'm in ARIN's region and have a customer in Africa for whom
we're announcing AFRINIC space. It happens. As long as you have
authorization from the registrant (I'd say owner, but the RIR-semantics
police would come for me) of the space, I wouldn't worry about utilizing
"out of region" numbering resources.
This sort of thing probably happens quite a bit more than you'd guess...both
legitmately and not.
I believe all the big multihomed multinational organizations generally
all do this; the ones I've worked with (banks) all did.
It would sort of defeat the purpose of multihoming if you couldn't
announce not just to other providers, but in some circumstances
multi-geographically. If my multihoming crosses a RIR boundary it's
still multihoming. One of those RIRs is probably "home territory" to
ask for allocations from, but in any case there shouldn't be a
technical or policy block to anouncing ARIN space in RIPE land, or any
similar variation thereof.