The assignment of numerical addresses for Domain Names ??

[William Case]

Hi;

My question is quite narrow.  I am not looking for generalized
explanations of IPv4.  

When ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers or one of its clients,
or any other IANA RIR) assigns a /8, or /16 number and registers a new
domain name is there any rules, policy or usual practice in the
assignment that gives a hint to the nature of the entity that has
received a certain address?  

E.g. If I see 64.71.255.198, could I reasonably say "That's a name
server, or, that's a Rogers Cable Inc. address" or glean any other
information about the organization, company or purpose?  Or are all such
address assignments simply arbitrary?  If there is such a rule, policy
or usual practice, do you know where I could find it and/or see a table
of such assignments.

I have done my google due diligence.  Every site, official and
otherwise, remains silent on the question.  That usually portends a
negative; there is no such policy -- but ya' never know.
 
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[Ed Greshko]

William Case wrote:

> Hi;
>
> My question is quite narrow.  I am not looking for generalized
> explanations of IPv4.  
>
> When ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers or one of its clients,
> or any other IANA RIR) assigns a /8, or /16 number and registers a new
> domain name is there any rules, policy or usual practice in the
> assignment that gives a hint to the nature of the entity that has
> received a certain address?  
>
> E.g. If I see 64.71.255.198, could I reasonably say "That's a name
> server, or, that's a Rogers Cable Inc. address" or glean any other
> information about the organization, company or purpose?  Or are all such
> address assignments simply arbitrary?  If there is such a rule, policy
> or usual practice, do you know where I could find it and/or see a table
> of such assignments.
>
> I have done my google due diligence.  Every site, official and
> otherwise, remains silent on the question.  That usually portends a
> negative; there is no such policy -- but ya' never know.
>  

Use "whois" to glean information...

egreshko@misty winXPPro-EN]$ whois 64.71.255.198
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[whois.arin.net]

OrgName:    Rogers Cable Communications Inc.
OrgID:      RCC-104
Address:    One Mount Pleasant
City:       Toronto
StateProv:  ON
PostalCode: M4Y-2Y5
Country:    CA

NetRange:   64.71.240.0 - 64.71.255.255
CIDR:       64.71.240.0/20
NetName:    ROGERS-CAB-104
NetHandle:  NET-64-71-240-0-1
Parent:     NET-64-0-0-0-0
NetType:    Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS2.YM.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
NameServer: NS2.WLFDLE.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
NameServer: NS3.YM.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
NameServer: NS3.WLFDLE.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
Comment:
RegDate:    2004-03-08
Updated:    2006-12-05

OrgTechHandle: IPMAN-ARIN
OrgTechName:   IP MANAGE
OrgTechPhone:  [phone]
OrgTechEmail:  ipmanage@...


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[Patrick O'Callaghan-2]

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 21:20 -0400, William Case wrote:

> Hi;
>
> My question is quite narrow.  I am not looking for generalized
> explanations of IPv4.  
>
> When ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers or one of its clients,
> or any other IANA RIR) assigns a /8, or /16 number and registers a new
> domain name is there any rules, policy or usual practice in the
> assignment that gives a hint to the nature of the entity that has
> received a certain address?  
>
> E.g. If I see 64.71.255.198, could I reasonably say "That's a name
> server, or, that's a Rogers Cable Inc. address" or glean any other
> information about the organization, company or purpose?  Or are all such
> address assignments simply arbitrary?  If there is such a rule, policy
> or usual practice, do you know where I could find it and/or see a table
> of such assignments.

Some policy is documented at http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html for
example, but in general you can't look at a random IP number and tell
what it stands for without further investigation. Use "whois" to find
out about specific assigned numbers.

Registries tend to assign blocks of addresses according to some estimate
of future needs, but of course this has varied a lot historically, which
is why early users such as MIT have /24 spaces (what used to be called
Class A). Think about it: MIT has 1/256th of all possible IPv4 addresses
in the world!

IPv6 of course is a whole new ball game, since the space is so large it
allows several alternative policies to exist side by side.

poc

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[William Case]

Thanks Ed;
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 09:23 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> William Case wrote:
> > Hi;
> >
> > My question is quite narrow.  I am not looking for generalized
> > explanations of IPv4.  

> Use "whois" to glean information...
>
> egreshko@misty winXPPro-EN]$ whois 64.71.255.198
> [Querying whois.arin.net]
> [whois.arin.net]

> OrgName:    Rogers Cable Communications Inc.
> OrgID:      RCC-104
> Address:    One Mount Pleasant
> City:       Toronto
> StateProv:  ON
> PostalCode: M4Y-2Y5
> Country:    CA
>
> NetRange:   64.71.240.0 - 64.71.255.255
> CIDR:       64.71.240.0/20
> NetName:    ROGERS-CAB-104
> NetHandle:  NET-64-71-240-0-1
> Parent:     NET-64-0-0-0-0
> NetType:    Direct Assignment
> NameServer: NS2.YM.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
> NameServer: NS2.WLFDLE.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
> NameServer: NS3.YM.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
> NameServer: NS3.WLFDLE.RNC.NET.CABLE.ROGERS.COM
> Comment:
> RegDate:    2004-03-08
> Updated:    2006-12-05
>
> OrgTechHandle: IPMAN-ARIN
> OrgTechName:   IP MANAGE
> OrgTechPhone:  [phone]
> OrgTechEmail:  ipmanage@...
>

Yes. I have used whois or jwhois.  I guess just by looking at
64.71.255.198 I can't tell much, but have to use whois to find out more.
I was wondering if say, all Broadcast companies are grouped as
64.70.xxx.xxx to 64.90.xxx.xxx or some such scheme -- but I guess not.
Not much point to it, on thinking about it.

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[Ed Greshko]

William Case wrote:

> Yes. I have used whois or jwhois.  I guess just by looking at
> 64.71.255.198 I can't tell much, but have to use whois to find out more.
> I was wondering if say, all Broadcast companies are grouped as
> 64.70.xxx.xxx to 64.90.xxx.xxx or some such scheme -- but I guess not.
> Not much point to it, on thinking about it.

You are correct.  The IP address alone won't tell you much.  They may be
some rhyme or reason as to how they are doled out...but the rhyme/reason is
not consistent over all of the world.  And the rhyme/reason is most likely
predicated on the physical.

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[William Case]

Hi Patrick;

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 21:54 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 21:20 -0400, William Case wrote:
[snip]
> Some policy is documented at http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html for
> example, but in general you can't look at a random IP number and tell
> what it stands for without further investigation. Use "whois" to find
> out about specific assigned numbers.
>

Yes, I gather the assignments, given history and everything else, are
too random to make them meaningful in themselves.  But thanks for the
policy URL above.  I had looked at the ARIN site but hadn't gone through
the policy page.  There is no answer to my immediate question, but
several incidental questions that I had put aside are answered there.


> Registries tend to assign blocks of addresses according to some estimate
> of future needs, but of course this has varied a lot historically, which
> is why early users such as MIT have /24 spaces (what used to be called
> Class A). Think about it: MIT has 1/256th of all possible IPv4 addresses
> in the world!
>
> IPv6 of course is a whole new ball game, since the space is so large it
> allows several alternative policies to exist side by side.

I have good data on IPv6.  As soon as I put the IPv4 stuff aside I will
invest a few hours in digesting that.

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[William Case]

Hi Ed;

Just an off topic comment.

On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 10:43 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:

> William Case wrote:
>
> > Yes. I have used whois or jwhois.  I guess just by looking at
> > 64.71.255.198 I can't tell much, but have to use whois to find out more.
> > I was wondering if say, all Broadcast companies are grouped as
> > 64.70.xxx.xxx to 64.90.xxx.xxx or some such scheme -- but I guess not.
> > Not much point to it, on thinking about it.
>
> You are correct.  The IP address alone won't tell you much.  They may be
> some rhyme or reason as to how they are doled out...but the rhyme/reason is
> not consistent over all of the world.  And the rhyme/reason is most likely
> predicated on the physical.
>

When I was a kid here in Ontario, you could tell what part of the
province a car was from just by the first couple of numbers on the
license plate, but that time is long gone.


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[Blake Hudson]

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: The assignment of numerical addresses for Domain Names ??
From: William Case billlinux@...
To: For users of Fedora fedora-list@...
Date: Thursday, August 07, 2008 9:48:15 PM

Hi Patrick;

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 21:54 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
  

On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 21:20 -0400, William Case wrote:
    

[snip]
  

Some policy is documented at http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html for
example, but in general you can't look at a random IP number and tell
what it stands for without further investigation. Use "whois" to find
out about specific assigned numbers.

    

Yes, I gather the assignments, given history and everything else, are
too random to make them meaningful in themselves.  But thanks for the
policy URL above.  I had looked at the ARIN site but hadn't gone through
the policy page.  There is no answer to my immediate question, but
several incidental questions that I had put aside are answered there.
  

IANA assigns /8's to regional authorities (such as ARIN). Each authority then has their own policy regarding assignments. From my experience, ARIN seems to simply uses the next available space out of their assignments. So if 10 companies requested IP blocks tomorrow, they would likely all receive IPs in the same /8. So basically, "first come, first serve" there is no order other than perhaps a bit of chronology if you know when a /8 started to be used.

ARIN probably has more IPs than any other regional authority, so they tend to be more liberal with their assignments (they give out larger blocks). Typically they give out enough IPs to last a requesting organization a year or two of expansion. This keeps the number of routes down which lessens BGP routing overhead (RAM and CPU usage). Other authorities are more stingy.

If you already have a block of IPs from ARIN and request one a year or two later, more than likely you'll get a block from a different /8. I'm sure ARIN audits IP usage occasionally, and probably tries to reclaim unused IP space, but they aren't very aggressive at it, and I'm sure a large portion of the IPs they've assigned go unused.

--Blake



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[Chris Tyler]

Ed Greshko wrote:

> William Case wrote:
>
> > Yes. I have used whois or jwhois.  I guess just by looking at
> > 64.71.255.198 I can't tell much, but have to use whois to find out
> more.
> > I was wondering if say, all Broadcast companies are grouped as
> > 64.70.xxx.xxx to 64.90.xxx.xxx or some such scheme -- but I guess
> not.
> > Not much point to it, on thinking about it.
>
> You are correct.  The IP address alone won't tell you much.  They may
> be
> some rhyme or reason as to how they are doled out...but the
> rhyme/reason is not consistent over all of the world.  And the
> rhyme/reason is most likely predicated on the physical.

http://xkcd.com/195/ provides an interesting perspective :-)

-Chris

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[William Case]

Hi Chris;
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 00:24 -0400, Chris Tyler wrote:
> Ed Greshko wrote:
> > William Case wrote:

>
> http://xkcd.com/195/ provides an interesting perspective :-)
>
> -Chris
>
Actually, Chris, it does provide an interesting perspective.  I wonder
how accurate it is.  It explains far more than any written
rationalization I have come across.


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[Björn Persson-3]

Chris Tyler wrote:
> http://xkcd.com/195/ provides an interesting perspective :-)

Yes, although it's quickly becoming outdated. For example, in an announcement
in February, ICANN mentioned that "IANA allocated more than one /8 (16m IPv4
addresses) per month in 2007 and the rate of allocation is not expected to
slow in 2008", so the green areas are shrinking fast.

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-10feb08.htm

Björn Persson


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[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 21:54:31 -0430,
  Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@...> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 21:20 -0400, William Case wrote:
> >
> > When ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers or one of its clients,
> > or any other IANA RIR) assigns a /8, or /16 number and registers a new
> > domain name is there any rules, policy or usual practice in the
> > assignment that gives a hint to the nature of the entity that has
> > received a certain address?  

At what time the prefix could be used to tell the size of the allocation.
The prefix determined whether the allocation was a class A, B or C (which
correspond to /8, 16 and /24 respectively).

Attempts were made to keep similar prefixes in the same area to keep routing
table sizes down.

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