3 ms·

> One last thing: a new 5-digit ASN will cost you about $500 from ARIN, but there are auctions for 4-digit ASNs, and they run into mid-five-figures. If any of y

by mike_d 5y ago

> One last thing: a new 5-digit ASN will cost you about $500 from ARIN, but there are auctions for 4-digit ASNs, and they run into mid-five-figures. If any of you can explain this to us, we'd be grateful. To answer the authors question: lower number ASNs are seen as older more established networks when negotiating peering. It's the equivalent of doing a WHOIS on someone's personal domain and seeing when they started seriously internetting. Obviously shorter numbers are more memorable and easier to type frequently, which is a desirable trait for network operators. You probably spent a few bucks on "fly.io" and applied a mental value to the outward perception of a short memorable domain.

techsupporter 5y ago
> It's the equivalent of doing a WHOIS on someone's personal domain and seeing when they started seriously internetting. We have a moderately-sized regional network at my employer (that's not an ISP) and I've seen a snide version of this. Our previous Director of IT who also made day-to-day decisions on things like peering would refer to 32-bit ASN holders as "six-digit trash." In his view, anyone who didn't have a 16-bit ASN was virtually not worth talking to. Not for technical reasons like our equipment didn't support the newer ASNs, just that they were Johnny-come-latelys. He was quite proud of the fact that our employer had and still held a sizeable quantity of legacy, as in pre-RIR, IPv4 address space. I'm fairly sure one of the reasons he quit was because of the decision the board of trustees made to transfer chunks of this space to other entities in our same line of work.
- hnarn 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but your previous director sounds like an insufferable colleague.
  - techsupporter 5y ago
    No need to apologize, we all didn't like him. If you'd told us that the easiest way to get him to depart in a huff would be to donate some unused IP addresses to other groups that needed them, we'd have deployed NAT64 and heaved the legacy allocations overboard in a long weekend.

by mike_d 5y ago

techsupporter 5y ago

> It's the equivalent of doing a WHOIS on someone's personal domain and seeing when they started seriously internetting. We have a moderately-sized regional network at my employer (that's not an ISP) and I've seen a snide version of this. Our previous Director of IT who also made day-to-day decisions on things like peering would refer to 32-bit ASN holders as "six-digit trash." In his view, anyone who didn't have a 16-bit ASN was virtually not worth talking to. Not for technical reasons like our equipment didn't support the newer ASNs, just that they were Johnny-come-latelys. He was quite proud of the fact that our employer had and still held a sizeable quantity of legacy, as in pre-RIR, IPv4 address space. I'm fairly sure one of the reasons he quit was because of the decision the board of trustees made to transfer chunks of this space to other entities in our same line of work.

hnarn 5y ago
I'm sorry, but your previous director sounds like an insufferable colleague.
- techsupporter 5y ago
  No need to apologize, we all didn't like him. If you'd told us that the easiest way to get him to depart in a huff would be to donate some unused IP addresses to other groups that needed them, we'd have deployed NAT64 and heaved the legacy allocations overboard in a long weekend.