Joe, The ends don't always justify the means. The reason there is a policy proposal in the ARIN region to stop this practice is because not everyone covered by these /12 announcements is happy that their addresses were part of an experiment. There is a belief that Merit should have had permission from the entities who had allocations out of these aggregates before announcing a prefix that included them. Note also that this is called a darknet project but these networks were NOT dark. They were live production IPv6 deployments around the world. This is not the same as announcing an IPv4 /8 that has nothing assigned out of it to see who is using it who shouldn't be.
Thanks! ----Cathy On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 5:29 PM, Joe St Sauver <j...@oregon.uoregon.edu>wrote: > Hi, > > John Curran commented: > > #We were asked to cooperate with Merit on darknet research on ARIN's IPv6 > #2600::/12 space and I authorized the effort. Apparently, the effort also > #included the routing an overall covering prefix and I missed that aspect > #of the project. Aside from the technical concerns outlined here, there > #is also a very valid question of whether ARIN should ever be involved in > #routing authorization covering already issued space, since presumably the > #same dialogue and consensus in the operator community (that should be a > #prerequisite for such an experiment) should also suffice as the approval > #with ISPs when it comes to researchers actually inserting the necessary > #routes. > # > #Going forward, ARIN will not issue routing authorization that covers any > #address space issued to others without community-developed policy that > #specifically directs us to do so. > > In mid-December 2013 I highlighted this very Merit darknet project in > a keynote I did for Merit Networks Networking Summit in Ann Arbor, see > "Networking in These Crazy Days: Stay Calm, Get Secure, and Get Involved," > http://pages.uoregon.edu/joe/merit-networking/merit-networking.pdf > at slide 28. > > I think that the Merit IPv6 darknet project was *very* important in helping > to promote uptake of IPv6 in that it provides empirical evidence that the > level of "background radiation" in IPv6 space isn't very high right now > (roughly ~1Mbps), and what is there is typically the result of > misconfiguration rather than malicious scanning (or at least that's what > was reported in the Merit technical paper summarizing that experience, > as cited in my slides). > > Moreover, given BGP route selection rules, I'm not particularly disturbed > by the presence of that covering announcement: any more specific route > should > immediately be preferred to a broad covering route of the sort employed by > the IPv6 darknet research effort. > > I believe that ARIN acted properly in supporting this network research, and > I'd be quite disappointed if ARIN (and other RIRs) discontinued support for > research of this sort, particularly when carefully done by leading academic > networking research organizations. > > Regards, > > Joe St Sauver, Ph.D. (j...@oregon.uoregon.edu) > > Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the Merit Darknet effort, and all > opinions expressed in this note are purely my own. > _______________________________________________ > PPML > You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to > the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List (ARIN-PPML@arin.net). > Unsubscribe or manage your mailing list subscription at: > http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml > Please contact i...@arin.net if you experience any issues. >
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