IP Address SWIP Help

All IP Addresses are handed down from one organization to another. At the top of the tree is IANA (for the World) and ARIN (for the Western Hemisphere). All delegations are tracked as being one of two types: Allocations and Assignments.

Allocations are IP blocks provided to an ISP/NSP reseller who will delegate these address to their customers. IP Blocks can go through multiple allocations and are usually cut into smaller pieces as they go. For example:

     IANA owns ALL IP SPACE 0.0.0.0 through 255.255.255.255
        10.0.0.0/8 is allocated to ARIN by IANA (for use in the Americas)
           10.5.0.0/16 is allocated to Frontier by ARIN (for use by Customers)
              10.5.4.0/23 is allocated to ISP-A by Frontier (for use by Customers)
                 10.5.4.128/25 is assigned to Business Customer by ISP-A (as the End-User)
                 (in practice, 10/8 isn't part of the Internet at all)

All of these allocations are tracked in the 'whois' database at 'whois.arin.net'. As you can see, the end-user is Assigned the IP block and no further allocations or assignments are possible.

Updates to the whois database are done via email templates called SWIPs (Shared WhoIs Protocol). In order to receive more ip-space and to continue using what you have, it is important to keep the whois database current. To get started, read the guidelines and send in updates to show your allocations and assignments. ARIN templates for submissions directly to ARIN can be found here. After being filled out, these templates are to be mailed toreassign@arin.net. You will receive one response within the hour, showing that your message was received. You shouldreceive another email within 48 hours showing that your template was processed. If you have problems finding your Maintainer ID, you can find it by doing a whois on your netblocks. If you still require help after reading the above linked documents, please contact ipadmin@support.ftr.com.