[OCCAID] New Policy [To be effective on Jan 10 2005] on IPv4 Networking

[James]

Effective on January 10th, 2005, OCCAID will cease new assignment(s) of /29
address space from its IPv4 space. Members with existing assignments will be
allowed to continue use their OCCAID-assigned address space without having to
return them for this policy change. 

All new members will be required to obtain their own /29 assignment from their
existing colocation or internet service provider on-site. They can then 
advertise their /29 to OCCAID via BGP.

This policy change is being mandated for the following reasons, after internal
debates between operators:

  o Most existing IPv4 development and testbed members have abandoned IPv4
    and picked IPv6 for future and ongoing routing policy experiments.

  o More effort to encourage and spread IPv6 usage is needed. Part of this
    effort is to make it easier for people to perform routing policy
    experiments inside IPv6, by giving them /48 space out of OCCAID's
    xTLA allocation.

  o OCCAID has run out of two /24 space it uses for IPv4 networking. An
    internal review discussion was made to decide whether more IPv4 space
    should be acquired from upstream provider(s), or pursue for allocation
    of experimental IPv4 space from ARIN. It has been determined that due to
    lesser interest in IPv4 networking lately, it no longer makes sense to
    obtain additional v4 address space.

  o If a member using OCCAID /29 space is under a Denial of Service attack,
    it directly impacts the OCCAID's IPv4 network integrity. We are not
    interested in dealing with security issues surrounding downstream members.

  o Because OCCAID is an experimental internet, it should only provide
    experimental environment -- such as connectivity and BGP session. It should
    be the participating member's responsibility to acquire his/her own address
    space from the respective upstream provider or the respective RIR.

OCCAID will no longer assign new IPv4 address space starting January 10th '05.
However, Tom had noted that there are still many people who are interested in
testing routing policy using IPv4, before moving into IPv6. After additional
reviews, it has been determined that such users can request addressing space
from their own upstream internet service providers.

IPv6 is not at all impacted by this policy change. IPv4 network will continue
to operate as usual -- it is just that new members should now seek address
space from their ISP then advertise to OCCAID, instead of seeking from OCCAID
itself.

The /31 point to point demarcation addresses for IPv4 networking will continue
to be assigned by OCCAID, in order to maintain consistency in our IPv4 IGP
routing topology.

-J

-- 
James Jun                                            TowardEX Technologies, Inc.
Technical Lead                      Boston IPv4/IPv6 Web Hosting, Colocation and
james at towardex.com            Network design/consulting & configuration services
cell: 1(978)-394-2867           web: http://www.towardex.com , noc: www.twdx.net