[ppml] Revised Policy Proposal Resource Reclamation

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

> More likely, say we eventually decide -- and counsel agrees -- that policy
> applies to folks with legacy assignments.  ARIN would then review everyone
> with such and apply the "if you applied for space today, what would we give
> you" standard.  If the org had significantly more than that amount, e.g.
> certain universities with a /8 who only really need a /14 or so, they'd get
> whacked.  Ditto for any org whose space doesn't show up in the global
> routing table and who doesn't respond to all reasonable attempts by ARIN to
> contact them; the presumption would be the space is no longer in use, not
> compliant with current policy, and could be reclaimed.

1) Legacy IP Space assignments were not assigned by ARIN -- do they have 
control over it, especially, if no RSA was signed (see #3)  Likely, in order 
to give all the RIR's a square shake, it'd have to go back to IANA not ARIN.

2) ARIN provides globally unique numbers without regard to routing, given 
justifiable need.  That it shows up in the routing table is not a 
requirement, and they explicitly say the space you are getting is not 
guaranteed routable.  In other words, they are a number registry.

3) Universities with a /8 (or other size) who have not asked for space 
recently, may be worth approaching for reclaimation; those that have added 
space to their initial allocations, have probably done their justifications 
recently.  Those who ignore ARIN may be legally justifed in doing so -- they 
did not get their space from ARIN, so have not agreed to the RSA.  Does ARIN 
have legal control over their space?  If I were them, I'd legally argue no, 
and by the time it gets settled, it'd probably moot.  (not that I don't 
question why some early allocations continue to have huge amounts of space, 
not only /8's. but also multiple /16's and /24's)



FWIW, My last count was 12 assigned /8's that weren't in the global routing 
tables. If we pushed those folks, they'd just announce some small prefix 
somewhere, and it'd be announced.  That the rest of their network is FW'd 
off from you is their business.  Just because they don't announce it today, 
doesn't mean they aren't entitled to the space.  Plus, they probably never 
signed an ARIN RSA, a few are international, government or multi-national, 
so ARIN's legal ability to smack down may be a long and rocky road.