If I had to guess, I would guess that renumbering is likely required to get it into a more portable address assignment from a multi-homing perspective. Look at the whois information below
If I were hosting a root server or something similar, I would certainly want it segregated enough that I could manage multi-homing for that address prefix outside of my other networks. In this case, I'd assume UMDNET-1 may have monetary or administrative policies regarding the ability to be multi-homed and the degree to which it can be, however providing multiple links to UMD-ROOTD-NET is likely much easier because those decisions (or cost of connections) don't necessarily need to affect UMDNET-1 NetRange: 128.8.0.0 - 128.8.255.255 CIDR: 128.8.0.0/16 OriginAS: AS27 NetName: UMDNET-1 NetHandle: NET-128-8-0-0-1 Parent: NET-128-0-0-0-0 NetType: Direct Assignment RegDate: 1984-08-01 Updated: 2011-05-03 Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-128-8-0-0-1 NetRange: 199.7.91.0 - 199.7.91.255 CIDR: 199.7.91.0/24 OriginAS: AS6059, AS27, AS10886 NetName: UMD-ROOTD-NET NetHandle: NET-199-7-91-0-1 Parent: NET-199-0-0-0-0 NetType: Direct Assignment RegDate: 2007-12-07 Updated: 2012-03-20 Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-199-7-91-0-1 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Thomas" <m...@mtcc.com> To: "Matthew Newton" <m...@leicester.ac.uk> Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Friday, December 14, 2012 8:59:19 AM Subject: Re: Advisory — D-root is changing its IPv4 address on the 3rd of January. Matthew Newton wrote: > On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 04:42:46PM +0000, Nick Hilliard wrote: >> On 13/12/2012 22:54, Jason Castonguay wrote: >>> Advisory — D-root is changing its IPv4 address on the 3rd of January. >> You've just given 3 weeks notice for a component change in one of the few >> critical part of the Internet's infrastructure, at a time when most > > I think that /was/ the advance notification - you've got 6 months :) > > "The old address will continue to work for at least six months > after the transition, but will ultimately be retired from > service." So really stupid question, and hopefully it's just me, do I need to do something on my servers? Second question: I know that renumbering is important in the abstract, but is there really an overwhelming reason why renumbering the root servers is critical? Shouldn't they all be in PI space for starters? Mike
