Hi,

Le 03/08/2022 à 09:26, Chris Smith via 44net a écrit :
At 15 months (of no login from you) your account is removed and any resources (address assignments, gateways) are removed. The only exception to this, is if you are a coordinator for a country or regional allocation, in which case your account is still removed, but the allocation is re-assigned to a special admin account that can’t be deleted. i.e. only “User” networks are ever removed.

I am was the network administrator for a full région (the island of Corsica). But my allocations were deleted without any re-allocation, and without any previous warning. This is because I was considered as a "single user" and nor as a "region coordinator". This is one of the reasons that made us drop 44net addressing, and revert back to standard public addresses : the need of control and stability.

On the engineering point of view, I see several things that could be improved :
- AFAIK the "region coordinator" role does not exist. I checked the "region allocation " checkbox on the portal during creation. But I still was considered as a "single user". That's why a simple mistake shut down a full region ! Maybe,you should create the role of  "region coordinator", which may be something between the "country coordinator" and the "user".
- A /24 subnet is not given to a single user (or I don't understand anything to the IP distribution policy). A /24 subnet means a network is located behind. Then, a /24 allocation should never be deleted without additional verification, because this may break a lot of things. Instead, it should (as suggested) be put on "parking", and allocated to the upstream coordinator.
- My network monitoring and Vultr (my BGP provider) informed me that the BGP announcement has been stopped ! I did not receive any notification from ARDC ! That's a severe drawback ! IMHO, before doing such critical actions, a warning email must be sent 30, 15, 7, 3 and 1 day before !
 
Moreover, when our 44.190 allocation has been removed by mistake, and despite the fact renumbering to 44.31 was agreed, re-allocation of our 44.190 for a transition period has not been accepted immediately. I had to exchange several (more than 20) private emails with several people.

This dose of instability and uncertainty was the main reason why we decides to drop 44net BGP addressing, and switch to commercial IPs on which we have full control.


Other reasons can be found here  :
"In terms of whether ARDC is planning to sell more addresses: while it may happen at some point in the future, ../.."
"ARDC have no plans to provide an SLA of any kind."
"The IP addresses are offered free of charge to individual licensed radio amateurs on a best efforts basis. There is no guarantee that the IPs will remain available, ARDC also reserve the right to withdraw permission to use addresses for any reason."

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We, sysop and network maintainers, spend a lot of time and money. Data center housings, virtual servers, fiber optics and transit are offered to the HAM community, but they are not free ! And even less when you're living on a remote island ! We can't afford building networks, VPN, POPs an regional-wide coverage, with still having the risk of things being completely taken down for any reason, and without any previous notification !

PS : The advocacy about our particular problem has been closed 2 weeks ago (An arrangement was proposed, but we decided to drop 44net, and switch to commercial IPs). I just hope those comments will help improve the 44Net allocation / withdrawal processes, so that sysops can obtain 44net addresses with sufficient level of stability. I have been an ardent 44net promoter during the last few years. During the next years, I'll remain an active follower...

73 de TK1BI