Media.Knet.Ca

K-Net has been approved for a /19 (32 blocks of class C IP addresses) from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). This address space allows us to start managing and assigning IP numbers, creating our own routing strategies and working with additional service providers. Some of the questions I asked of Adi and Dan (the folks creating this opportunity for K-Net and the ones going to be taking care it) include: Q: Will the new routing efforts require a lot of work on your part? RESPONSE: I am afraid so. I will have to make arrangements to peer our new address space with ENO. The internal routing for the new address space will have to be BGP. I have a 500+ page book about BGP that will require reading. All of our communities, servers, computers will have to be migrated to the new address space. This will require significant changes and a good action plan to have all the changes go smoothly without breaking connectivity, especially on the cable systems where IP lease times are 1 week. Q: I wonder why it went thru this time and not the last time we applied for these numbers? RESPONSE: We are now utilizing a /20 (16 class C's) worth of address space using ENO numbers. Because we are an ISP, we assign these numbers to other organizations. Every time we bring a community online I actually submit a form to ARIN telling them who received which IP space. ARIN uses this information to determine how much IP space we are actually utilizing. The requirement from ARIN is that at least 80% of /20 are utilized. We met that requirement. We also met the requirements for additional address space to bring the satellite communities online, build the Thunder Bay network, etc. Q: How long do you think this /19 will last (I am not clear what this means or how many numbers/devices it actually supports)? RESPONSE: A /19 is 32 class C blocks or 32*255 IP numbers. In the application with ARIN I justified the use of 27 class C's including the space we are utilizing from ENO. I guess it depends how fast the network grows. The initial cost for the /19 is US$2500.00. The annual renewal fee is US$2250.00. ARIN charges fixed fees for specific block sizes, if we outgrow the /19 the fees will increase (double).