I'm looking to find out what kind of options we have to aquire IP
addresses to use for hosting web sites for clients. We offer systems
to our clients that requires them to have individual IP addresses for
each of their web sites.

We are currently using a company that offers services to us, and they
give us use of their IP addresses, but we are now looking to setup our
own servers. I believe that ARIN is the IP address authority. What I
want to find out is:

 1. What are the steps for getting our own ip addresses.
 2. What are the costs?
 3. I've heard that it is very difficult to get ARIN to issue IP
address blocks, can you find information on this.. is it routine or
only done under special circumstances?
 4. If we register IP's, we would also need to get more than what we
currently need becuase we need it for future clients. Is that
possible, if so, how much more can we get?
 5. Are there experts that can help us get these IP adddresses from ARIN?

I'm not looking for just the facts, but also information on the process.

---

Clarification of Question by danwestside-ga on 22 Jul 2004 10:53 PDT

One point of clarification. ARIN has strict requirements for
allocating IP space, and since we already use IP's from another
provider, I want to know what they need to actually allocate IP
addresses to our name.

That information is very hidden.

---

Clarification of Question by danwestside-ga on 26 Jul 2004 09:04 PDT

One last point,  as we are a web hosting provider... 

What are some valid justifications that ARIN approves for providing IP
based hosting? This needs to be supplied as part of the application
process.

---

Clarification of Question by danwestside-ga on 26 Jul 2004 16:55 PDT

crythias-ga, We need 10,000, and room to grow.

---

Clarification of Question by danwestside-ga on 30 Jul 2004 00:32 PDT

Thanks everyone for your help so far. We currently are BGP, but using
some other companies IP's. But they are not an large ISP, they
contract Sprint, QWEST, etc.. We're definitely going multi-homed, BGP
in our new location.

I think the last point of contention I have remaining is the fact that
ARIN makes it difficult for web hosting companies to acquire IP
addresses. I tried asking what they see as a valid justification for
an IP address for each web site hosted, but they said that it went on
a case by case basis.

from the template: http://www.arin.net/library/templates/net-end-user.txt
Prior to requesting an assignment of IP addresses, please refer to the 
following policies for qualification criteria:

   a. http://www.arin.net/policy/ipv4.html#enduser
   b. http://www.arin.net/policy/ipv4.html#microalloc
   c. http://www.arin.net/policy/2002_3.html  

The action of requesting addresses from ARIN indicates you have read and 
agree to abide by one of these policies.

Please note that IP address registrations from ARIN are subject to the 
fees outlined at:
   http://www.arin.net/registration/fee_schedule.html         

If you are assigned IP address space directly from ARIN, it will be for
an immediate to one year need. Each organization that is assigned IP
address space from ARIN must first establish an Organization 
Identification (Org ID) with ARIN.

-=-=-=-
It seems that you're able to do things on your own...

Phone: (703) 227-0660
Fax: (703) 227-0676
They need proof that you've got immediate and efficient utilization of
the block you request.
-=-=-
http://www.arin.net/library/training/end_user/index.html

No, they aren't going to allow just "anyone" to get IP addresses. A
/20 is 4,096 IPs.
-=-=-
From the links above:
In general, the minimum block of IP address space assigned by ARIN to
end-users is a /20. If assignments smaller than /20 are needed,
end-users should contact their upstream provider. For multi-homed
end-users, the minimum block of IP address space assigned is a /22. If
assignments smaller than a /22 are needed, multi-homed end-users
should contact their upstream providers. When prefixes are assigned
which are longer than /20, they will be from a block reserved for that
purpose. [Policy 2002-3]

Utilization rate of address space is a key factor in justifying a new
assignment of IP address space. Requesters must show exactly how
previous address assignments have been utilized and must provide
appropriate details to verify their one-year growth projection. The
basic criteria that must be met are:

A 25% immediate utilization rate, and 

A 50% utilization rate within one year. 

A greater utilization rate may be required based on individual network
requirements. Please refer to RFC 2050 for more information on
utilization guidelines.

I assume that you're referring to the fact that your IP address space
that you currently use is non-portable; as in that if you change
providers (ie: you have Sprint now and you want to switch to Level3)
you have to renumber your network.

You're probably looking to get PI (provider independant) space which
is portable (movable) if you were to ever change providers.

It's somewhat difficult to get PI space now because of the amount of
IP address space being currently used on the internet.  If backbone
routers were to have information on every route on the Internet, they
would have to have gigabytes of RAM to be able to juggle such enormous
tables.

A lot of this was solved with CIDR
(http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1519.html), but as such, ARIN had to
tighten up the reigns on PI space.

Anyways, specific answers to your questions:

1)   The ARIN end-user allocaton site has a (pretty much) step-by-step
guide in geting provider independant addresses:

http://www.arin.net/library/training/end_user/index.html

You will need to have justification for requesting a /20 (4096 IP
addresses) -- they will typically ask for a fairly detailed network
topology description to justify your request of space.  You will need
to use 25% of the assigned addresses immediatley, and 50% of the
addresses within one year of allocation.

You will also need to get an Autononymous System Number (ASN), which
is available here:  http://www.arin.net/registration/asn/index.html. 
There is a registration fee and a yearly maintenance fee with this as
well.

ARIN will then review and either approve or deny your request.

If they approve your request, you will have to pay startup fees within 60 days.

You'll then need to work with your provider to have them advertise
your ASN and routing information to the rest of the world so your
addresses become routable.

Once that is done, you're pretty much set, except for the yearly
maintenace fees on the ASN and IP allocation.

2)     PI space setup fee: $2,500.
       PI space yearly maintenance fee: $100.
       ASN setup fee: $500.
       ASN yearly maintenance fee: $100.
       Plus any fees your ISP may charge you for routing PI space.

3)     It's not difficult so long as you meet the requirements
outlined in RFC 2050 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2050.html) and
follow the flowchart on the End-User assignment page
(http://www.arin.net/library/training/end_user/index.html)  It's not a
special-circumstance situation, nor is it not routine, it just
requires a specific set of conditions to be met.

4)     Your request to ARIN should be enough to accomodate current use
plus future growth, as defined within the paramters of RFC 2050.  You
should plan for 50% utilization of your assigned addresses within one
year of assignment.

5)     Your ISP *should* have someone who can help you with this, but
your mileage may vary depending on your ISP.

On a side note, several years back, most ISPs filtered out CIDR blocks
smaller than a /20 to keep their core routers from being overloaded;
which meant if your IP assignment was a /20, some ISPs (most notibly
Sprint) would not accept your route into their network, and your IPs
would be unreachable from their network unless your ISP announced it
within a larger supernet.

I think this problem has gone away with the proliferation of large
routers with oodles of memory, but this may be something to look out
for.

ARIN will want to know: 
1) do you have 1024 IPs that you will use *today* 
2) can you prove that you will use 2048 IPs by next year?

danwestside-ga, please tell us how many IPs you are trying to acquire.
I don't know anything else to tell you what to tell ARIN. If you
answered 'yes' to those two questions here, and have some way of
substantiating it (not to me, but to ARIN), you've pretty much
fulfilled the requirements.

-=-=-
Web Hosting Policy

When an ISP submits a request for IP address space to be used for
IP-based web hosting, it will supply (for informational purposes only)
its technical justification for this practice. ARIN will analyze this
data continuously, evaluating the need for future policy change.
-=-=-=-

IP based web hosting is kind of a waste of IPs, because virtual
hosting is usually adequate for a lot of users. But, your best bet is
to pick up the phone and call ARIN. You don't even have to call them
as "officialyou.com" the first call. Just ask them.

OK, so you can justify it... Ask for a /17 .... it's 32,768 IPs, with
what you said, 25% allocation right *now* and easily 50% allocation
(16384 IPs) in 1 year.

Otherwise, a /16 is 16,384, which *only* gives you 6000 more IPs. You
should be able to qualify easily for either one.

Of course, this may require your uplink to adjust some router configurations.

danwestside-ga,

A few more tidbits of information.

The costs vary based on whether or not you are an ISP or just an
end-use provider.  Typically, ARIN defines an ISP as someone who is
multi-homed, meaning you have multiple connections to the Internet. 
One of these could be to your existing provider.

ARIN is the allocation agency for the United States.  If your business
is in another country, you will be subject to a different
organization, but generally the same set of rules.

Allocation is done regularly and is based upon current provable usage.
 This means you must have your servers live and in a DNS server
somewhere that ARIN can check them out with.  The checking is somewhat
extensive, but as long as you aren't trying to overstep the allocation
policies you'll be fine.

As a web hosting provider, the only real statement they will want you
to make is that you are doing this to multi-home.  They are less
likely to allow you to do this if you just want to move providers,
given that another provider can give you space.

They will need a brief breakdown of the network assets at minimum.  It
helps to send them network maps and a per-IP breakdown of your
existing usage, or at least an allocation plan, as well as detailed
documentation of growth patterns.

They regularly provide growth space based on the initial allocation
and will typically, though not always, allocate some space on either
side of your requested block in the event you grow faster than they
anticipate.

When receiving the new space, as crythias-ga suggests, you should be
able to use it immediately.  Your existing providers will have to
"announce" the space for you using a routing protocol such as BGP;
they will be familiar with this or should be.  If you are multi-homing
you will need to speak BGP to your providers.  Multi-homing is the
typical requirement for an organization to seek ARIN address space.

I imagine crythias-ga is the likely researcher to answer this
question, but i'm glad to be of assistance as a full-time network
engineer.

Thanks,
arimathea-ga

arimathea-ga, thanks for the comments. I am not a Google Answers
Researcher, but feel free to claim the prize on this one ... I only
provided information that was available from the website. From the
information listed, it seemed that ARIN would make their decision
within about 3 days. That doesn't sound like an organization that
would make it difficult to work with if the requesting agency was
legit.

I wasn't sure if multi-homed or end-user was applicable, though.
Without more information, end-user seemed reasonable.