RFC - 2008

Implications of Various Address Allocation Policies for Internet Routing

Original:	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2008.txt
Authors:	Y. Rekhter [Cisco Systems], T. Li [Cisco Systems]
Date:	October 1996
Category:	Best Current Practice [ BCP-7 ]

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Referred by:	11 RFC
Refers to:	6 RFC

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Status

This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

IESG Note

The addressing constraints described in this document are largely the result of the interaction of existing router technology, address assignment, and architectural history. After extensive review and discussion, the authors of this document, the IETF working group that reviewed it, and the IESG have concluded that there are no other currently deployable technologies available to overcome these limitations. In the event that routing or router technology develops to the point that adequate routing aggregation can be achieved by other means or that routers can deal with larger routing and more dynamic tables, it may be appropriate to review these constraints.

Abstract

IP unicast address allocation and management are essential operational functions for the Public Internet. The exact policies for IP unicast address allocation and management continue to be the subject of many discussions. Such discussions cannot be pursued in a vacuum - the participants must understand the technical issues and implications associated with various address allocation and management policies.

The purpose of this document is to articulate certain relevant fundamental technical issues that must be considered in formulating unicast address allocation and management policies for the Public Internet, and to provide recommendations with respect to these policies.

The major focus of this document is on two possible policies, "address ownership" and "address lending," and the technical implications of these policies for the Public Internet. For the organizations that could provide reachability to a sufficiently large fraction of the total destinations in the Internet, and could express such reachability through a single IP address prefix the document suggests to use the "address ownership" policy. However, applying the "address ownership" policy to every individual site or organization that connects to the Internet results in a non-scalable routing.

Consequently, this document also recomments that the "address lending" policy should be formally added to the set of address allocation policies in the Public Internet. The document also recommends that organizations that do not provide a sufficient degree of routing information aggregation, but wish to obtain access to the Internet routing services should be strongly encouraged to use this policy to gain access to the services.

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