Howdy. This afternoon I was working with a used switch I recently
purchased when I noticed it still had the previous owner's IP in it. I
noted that it wasn't a reserved address that I recognized so I looked it
up. As it turned out the IP belonged to Occidental Petroleum Corp
(oxy.com) and was part of a /16 (155.224.0.0/16). The fact that it they
had a /16 was a bit surprising. Seeing how it was allocated back in 1992,
I guess I really shouldn't be that surprised. I figured they must have
enough remote offices to reasonably use a large portion of that /16.
While loading their website I noted that www.oxy.com fell into another
netblock (208.35.252.113/24). I was curious enough (read: bored) that I
eventually queried Arin's WHOIS for Occidental Petroleum and was quite
surprised at what I saw.
http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=occidental%20petroleum
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM (OCCIDE-1)
Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OPC)
Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OPC-2)
Occidental Petroleum IP (OPI-1)
Occidental Petroleum Corporation (AS26517) OXYHOUAS-01 26517
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106789196846411 (NET-63-166-189-0-1)
63.166.189.0 - 63.166.189.255
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106789094446405 (NET-63-166-185-0-1)
63.166.185.0 - 63.166.185.255
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106789068846359 (NET-63-166-184-0-1)
63.166.184.0 - 63.166.184.255
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-106790118446425 (NET-63-166-225-0-1)
63.166.225.0 - 63.166.225.255
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-110111612871621 (NET-65-161-178-224-1)
65.161.178.224 - 65.161.178.255
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM FON-349201920042097 (NET-208-35-252-0-1)
208.35.252.0 - 208.35.252.255
Occidental Petroleum Corp. OXY1-NET (NET-155-224-0-0-1)
155.224.0.0 - 155.224.255.255
Occidental Petroleum Corporation OXY-2 (NET-170-189-0-0-1)
170.189.0.0 - 170.189.255.255
Occidental Petroleum Corporation OXY-3 (NET-199-248-164-0-1)
199.248.164.0 - 199.248.168.255
Occidental Petroleum IP FON-106769945643237 (NET-63-163-205-0-1)
63.163.205.0 - 63.163.205.255
Occidental Petroleum IP FON-106780672044417 (NET-63-165-112-0-1)
63.165.112.0 - 63.165.112.255
They have not one /16 but two /16s, eight /24s, one /22, and one /27.
Does this seem a little excessive to anyone else? I can think of a dozen
state-run universities off of the top of my head that could never dream of
justifying a /16, let alone more.
I hate to pummel a dead horse but would it be worthwhile to ask these
corporations to relinguish netblocks that they don't use or can't justify
keeping? "Because I'm paying you" isn't a good enough reason IMHO.
Would it be worthwhile to have organizations with direct allocations
submit a netblock usage summary every 4-5 years to justify keeping their
existing blocks? I know it might be hard for ARIN to justify taking back
someone's netblocks. It just irks me to no ends to see a considerable
amount of wasted netspace such as this.
Pardon me for asking because I imagine this has been discussed many times
before.
Justin Shore
Discussion on changing policies allowing to recover wasted ip space
should be done on proper ARIN mailing list - ppml@arin.net
If you're not subscribed, I can repost your message there, but I can tell
you right now this will not be supported - nobody wants to have to
rejustify a block (even after 5 years) and even worse is that ARIN for
legal and other reasons is not touching old ip space having basicly said
they can not apply its policies there because ip space was not received
from ARIN but from another entity and ARIN is now just maintaining the
database for it.
As for Occidental Petroleum, I'd recommend you just email them saying you
found their other ip block 155.224.0.0/16 and is concerned it maybe
hijacked and missused like several other blocks you'v seen and tell them
to update arin records, enter their tech handle and dns servers or if they
are not ever planning to use the block then to return space to ARIN. That
is about as much as you can do here.
William,
If you think it would be useful, you're welcome to repost it on that
mailing list. I don't generally join discussions of policy if I can help
it and am not a member of that mailing list.
I understand the problems of the grandfathered netblocks. Hindsight being
20/20 perhaps the initial policies could have been written in a way that
permitted the changes neccessary to allow a policy change today to affect
assignments from way back then. I doubt few could have foreseen how
quickly IP usage grew and the problems that we face today.
The only interim solution I can think of while we wait on the widespread
use of IPv6 is a simple list of large, allocated chunks of netspace that
are unused and who they are allocated to. Nothing insinutating or
accusing them of a wrongdoing; just a statement of fact. Perhaps making
such information readily available on the Net will generate enough peer
pressure to convince those with unused netspace to return it.
I may do as you mention and email them. Hoping for policy changes that
prevent this problem from occuring is probably a pipe dream. Isn't it a
good pipe dream though?
Justin
Discussion on changing policies allowing to recover wasted ip space
should be done on proper ARIN mailing list - ppml@arin.net
Why? It is well above the median off-topicness here.
If you're not subscribed, I can repost your message there, but I can tell
you right now this will not be supported - nobody wants to have to
rejustify a block (even after 5 years) and even worse is that ARIN for
legal and other reasons is not touching old ip space
Real fair to people who really need addresses... Even if the RIRs don't want to flat-out revoke the allocations there is plenty they can do to encourage people to give back their large blocks that are presumably underused. One way would be to not allow ISPs to assign even a single new address to those organizations. Another would be to charge a yearly per-address fee. Make it 6 cents per address: $15 for a /24, $4000 for a /16 and $1,000,000 for a /8. That'll teach them.
On the other hand, why bother when there are still 1.5 billion (40% of the usable IPv4 address space) unallocated by IANA? And the current growth rate seems fairly stable at around 65 million per year being allocated to the RIRs. That should give us plenty of time to adopt IPv6.