> On Aug 14, 2008, at 11:13 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: > > ARIN holds the top of that authority and delegation > hierarchy because > > they give out the ASnums and IP address blocks. > > And here I thought IANA handed out ASnums and IP address > blocks to ARIN (and RIPE and LACNIC and AfriNIC and APNIC and > the IETF for specific protocol requirements)...
We are talking Internet operations, not Internet politics. You are right as far as that goes but it is ARIN et al. who hand out ASNums and IP addresses to the network operators who actually *USE* these numbers in operational networks. People don't care where the numbers came from, they care who actually got the rights to use them, and then what those orgs did with the rights, i.e. an IP addr block owner may delegate the rights to announce a subset of their space to a specific ASnum holder. Etc. --Michael Dillon
