On 22 Jun 2009, at 12:20, <michael.dillon@bt.com> wrote:
Your example is essentially saying there is no barrier for a holder of an anycast address block, to offer more than one anycast service from that block.
Hmm. What you really seem to be saying here is there is no barrier for a holder of an address block to offer more than one service from that block. That principle should not come as a surprise. :-) To get back to the anycast allocation provisions, the new policy says these allocations are for DNS service for TLDs and ENUM Tier-1 delegations. So if the holders of these blocks used them for other things, they'd presumably be in violation of that policy.
I think that address policy should be addressing that general case of an anycast network services provider rather than dealing with various special cases of applications that require anycast network services.
I tend to sympathise with that view. However the current policy only concerns itself with anycast allocations for "important" DNS zones. Let's see how that works out in practice before considering how or if the policy should be extended. [My guess is the IPv4 shelves will be bare before we reach that point.] I'm also a bit concerned that a more liberal approach to anycasting allocations would be easy to game once the land-grab for the last chunks of IPv4 space kicks in.