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Teleports and number resource hierarchy

Short answer

A teleport is a satellite earth-station complex providing gateway between satellites and terrestrial networks, enabling internet where fibre is unavailable. Number resources are managed hierarchically: IANA allocates to RIRs, RIRs to NIRs/LIRs, and LIRs assign to end users, ensuring unique addresses and route aggregation.

What are teleports? Explain the hierarchical structure for management of internet number resources.

Teleports

A teleport is a satellite earth-station complex that acts as a gateway between satellites and terrestrial networks. It has large dish antennas, uplink/downlink equipment, modems, and fibre links to the ground network. A teleport sends and receives data, voice and TV signals to and from communication satellites.

Role in the Internet: where fibre is unavailable (remote hills, islands, ships, aircraft), an ISP can use a satellite link through a teleport (VSAT) to connect to the Internet backbone. Teleports also serve as a backup to terrestrial and submarine cable links, and support TV broadcasting and international telephony.

Hierarchy for management of Internet number resources

Number resources are IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs). They are distributed top-down so that each is globally unique.

        IANA (global pool, operated under ICANN)
              |
  +-----+-----+-----+------+
AFRINIC APNIC ARIN LACNIC RIPE NCC    (5 RIRs)
              |
        NIRs (national, optional)
              |
        LIRs (ISPs, large orgs)
              |
          End users
  • IANA allocates large blocks (IPv4 /8, IPv6 /12) and ASN ranges to RIRs under global policies.
  • RIRs serve one world region each. They allocate to NIRs and LIRs, maintain the WHOIS database and reverse DNS delegation, and run the policy development process. Nepal is served by APNIC.
  • NIRs (e.g. JPNIC, CNNIC, IRINN) serve ISPs inside one country. Nepal has none.
  • LIRs are ISPs that get blocks (e.g. IPv6 /32) and assign smaller blocks to customers (e.g. /48 or /56).
  • End users use the assigned addresses, and may further subnet them internally.

Advantages: unique addresses, conservation of the limited IPv4 space through need-based policy, and aggregation of routes, which keeps backbone routing tables small.

Why the hierarchy matters (example)

Suppose a Nepali ISP needs addresses. It applies to APNIC (its RIR) and, after justifying its need, receives for example 103.x.x.0/22 and an AS number. The ISP (acting as an LIR) then assigns a /29 to a small company and a /24 to a university. Because all customers lie inside the ISP's block, the rest of the world needs only one route entry (the /22) to reach all of them. Registration in the APNIC WHOIS database shows who holds each block, which helps in tracing abuse and solving routing problems.

✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)

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