Hi,
We have a customer who was assigned some PI IPv4 space by Paetec back in
mid-90's and who has continued to announce the blocks, even though their
relationship with Paetec ended a long time ago.
Is this a common situation? Does the customer risk having that space
reclaimed by Paetec at some point, or is it safe to assume they will
continue to be able to route trouble-free for years to come?
Thanks,
Adam
Hi,
We have a customer who was assigned some PI IPv4 space by Paetec back in
mid-90's and who has continued to announce the blocks, even though their
relationship with Paetec ended a long time ago.Is this a common situation?
No data either way.
Does the customer risk having that space
reclaimed by Paetec at some point
What does the contract say?
, or is it safe to assume they will
continue to be able to route trouble-free for years to come?
It is never save to assume anything, but especially not save to assume "trouble-free for years to come".
We have a customer who was assigned some PI IPv4 space by Paetec back in
mid-90's and who has continued to announce the blocks, even though their
relationship with Paetec ended a long time ago.Is this a common situation? Does the customer risk having that space
reclaimed by Paetec at some point, or is it safe to assume they will
continue to be able to route trouble-free for years to come?
They should plan to renumber out of that space in the very near future.
Even with some sort of formally documented agreement between Paetec and the customer that explicitly allows the customer to continue using the space after the end of their business relationship, I would guess that ARIN's policies take a rather dim view of 'off the books' transfers of address space.
This sounds like an administrative oversight on Paetec's part - one that Paetec could choose to correct at any time. It's also not impossible that if Paetec forgot about this space, that they could try to assign it to another customer, effectively double-booking it, and causing major headaches for your customer and whatever customer gets the space.
It's also possible that a post about this to a widely-read mailing list could prompt someone from Paetec to look into this more closely 
jms
I think it's correct to say that the only entities that can assign PI IPv4 space are RIRs and the IANA. If I'm right, what you're talking about is PA space, regardless of claims made by your customer or Paetec.
Joe
Joe,
We have a customer who was assigned some PI IPv4 space by Paetec back in
mid-90's and who has continued to announce the blocks, even though their
relationship with Paetec ended a long time ago.Is this a common situation?
It was back in the day. It isn't any more. Most folks doing that have
since renumbered.
Does the customer risk having that space
reclaimed by Paetec at some point,
That depends what Paetec has to say about it. Unless the customer has
paperwork to the effect that the assignment outlives the business
relationship (and for how long) then it's entirely up to Paetec staff
today and tomorrow.
or is it safe to assume they will
continue to be able to route trouble-free for years to come?
Like all registrants, Paetec is under increasing pressure from ARIN to
justify its ongoing assignments. It is not required to provide
Internet services to your customer, but lack of ongoing contact with
your customer is likely to become an administrative problem for them.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
It's got to be PA space. Paetec isn't in a position to assign PI space.
I used to think similarly, that ARIN members could only assign PA space to connectivity customers, but last time I consulted with ARIN about it, I was informed this is not the case. AFAIK, there is nothing stopping any provider from acting like an LIR and "renting" IP space to customers whether the customers get connectivity from the provider or not.
Maybe they have Paetec's permission to use the space indefinitely. Maybe it's an oversight in Paetec's turn-down process that the space was never reclaimed.
Jon,
We have a customer who was assigned some PI IPv4 space by Paetec back in mid-90's
They should plan to renumber out of that space in the very near future.
It'd be nice for routing system hygiene, but there probably is no requirement (unless there was some contractual language with Paetec).
I used to think similarly, that ARIN members could only assign PA space to connectivity customers, but last time I consulted with ARIN about it, I was informed this is not the case.
"mid-90's" suggests "before ARIN".
Regards,
-drc
No distinction is drawn between PA and PI for ARIN-region address
space assigned prior to ARIN's inception in 1997. That's "legacy"
address space.
Since the end of filtering on prefixes shorter than /24, PA and PI
have lost most of ther distinction anyway. There's RIR-assigned and
there's LIR assigned. The RIR assignes addresses to LIRs and end
users. The LIR assigns addresses to LIRs and end users. Unless its
IPv6 in which LIRs are strongly discouraged from assigning addresses
to other LIRs and multihomed end users.
Short version: drop PI and PA from the conversation. It makes
absolutely no difference whether the customer thought Paetec assigned
them PI space. The customer's addresses are either directly from ARIN
or they're from Paetec. That's it. If the latter, it's up to Paetec
what the customer can and can't continue to do with them.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
f the assignment predated ARIN, then its not clear if current ARIN policy
is applicable.
Thanks everyone.
It sounds like (a) customer needs to clarify contract terms with Paetec, and
(b) unless they have an ongoing relationship, the best long-term plan is to
renumber.
I did check reg dates on the blocks, and it is much more recent than the
customer led me to believe (or than I interpreted) ... so I suspect this is
less something which simply dropped off the map and more of an above-board
and possibly ongoing relationship than I suspected. The customer does
provide voice service, so there may be something going on behind the scenes
which makes sense from an authoritative routing perspective.
Thanks for your help. This customer seems to be responsible so I suspect I
may not have all the details and overstated the issue.
The distinction to me is that PA space is provider owned space assigned to a customer.
PI space is "your space", whether assigned by ARIN or "legacy" space handed out by Internic or whoever was handing out space at the given pre-RIR time. It's yours to use with whatever provider you want.
PA space generally can't be taken with you if you leave the provider...though it's not unusual to be given some amount of time to renumber.
IME, it would be unusual, even for pre-RIR space, for a provider to assign space to a customer and not expect to reclaim that space when the customer terminates service. At the same time, it wouldn't be unusual, particularly for very large or very people/clue deficient providers to just never bother reclaiming space. In such a case, I'd say it still is their space...they just haven't done the housekeeping to realize that the space should be back in their pool of assignable blocks.
This is an excellent time to plan to renumber into 2001:: if they haven't
such plans already. 
Hi Jon,
If the space was assigned after ARIN's inception then it's no more
owned by the service provider than by the end user. If the ARIN
contract you signed was clear on nothing else, it was clear about
that.
You are correct, however, that the Local Internet Registry (LIR, aka
ISP) may set additional rules for the address' use beyond those rules
ARIN sets. In the ARIN region (this is less clear cut in other
regions) one of the common rules the LIR sets is that you can't keep
the addresses when you cease to buy a compatible product from the LIR.
However, and this is important, the LIR has complete discretion in
adding that rule. ARIN in no way requires it.
So it isn't PA or PI... it's just a heirarchy of registries, each of
which adds rules.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
And just one more note to complicate things a little more for you. Paetec was acquired by Windstream last year. I hope that doesn't make it even harder for you to find answers to your questions from the service provider, but I suspect that it will.
Well, somewhere in 2000::/3, anyway… It might be somewhere within any of the following blocks: 2001:400::/23, 2001:1800::/23, 2001:4800::/23, 2600::/12, or 2610::/23, 2620::/23.
All of which have been delegated to ARIN by IANA.
As to the PI/PA question… There were PI blocks issued by LIRs (ISPs) in the years after the initial implementation of CIDR and before (and possibly for some time after) the creation of ARIN. My blocks 192.159.10.0/24 and 192.124.40.0/23 are examples of such blocks which were originally issued to me by Netcom and PSI, respectively. They are now correctly documented as "Direct Assignments" in the ARIN database and covered by LRSA (which I now regret given the recent fee restructuring).
Owen