[arin-ppml] Draft Policy 2010-1: Waiting List for Unmet IPv4 Requests

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> > I suggest that it is not ARIN's business to decide what 
> better serves 
> > the community, since ARIN is not lord and master of the 
> community, but 
> > its servant. ARIN should only try to be reasonably fair, not make 
> > heroic efforts whose outcome could be worse, and whose outcome is 
> > certainly unknowable.
> > 
> ARIN is the community's steward over the address space and it 
> is absolutely ARIN's role to balance the needs of the various 
> stakeholders in the community and develop policies that meet 
> the communities consensus of what best meets the community's 
> need with the application of sound judgment by those elected 
> by the community to that consensus.

That is a very paternalistic attitude. ARIN is not the boss of
us. It is only a forum in which the stakeholders themselves can
balance their needs. If the stakeholders fail to come to agreement
then ARIN should not act independently to impose a solution. ARIN
is fundamentally a bottom-up creature of self-regulation among the
stakeholders.

> The idea of fair depends a great deal on perspective in the 
> case in question. If you are the guy asking for a /14, then, 
> fair is to give you all the pieces necessary for you to have 
> address space equivalent to the /14. If your the guy who put 
> in the request for a /24 30 seconds after the guy who asked 
> for the /14, your idea of fair might be a bit different.

ARIN simply does not have the information to know which outcome
is more fair. It is not ARIN's job to be judge and jury over the
last few crumbs. There is a bigger picture that does not involve
the aberrations of squabbles over the last few crumbs of IPv4 adress
space.

> > Far better for them to get down to the rag market and 
> haggle over the 
> > price of an old silk dress that could be reworked into a silk purse.
> > 
> Who are you to decide which is better for them? Why should 
> ARIN decide on their behalf?

ARIN is deciding on ARIN's behalf that it does not want to sit in
the middle and arbitrate squabbles over the last few crumbs. ARIN's
main job is not to hand out address blocks but to evaluate applications
and decide how many IP addresses are justified. Then, if there are some
on the shelf, ARIN hands out an appropriately sized block. When the
shelf
becomes bare, ARIN should resist expanding it's activities, and stick to
evaluating applications, and recording records.

> That's one strategy option. Not necessarily the only strategy.
> Clearly it's the one you think is best, but, like LDAP, it is 
> not necessarily the best answer for everyone in every case.

No, I do not think hunting for transfer blocks is best since I don't
believe that many people will e successful. The best strategy is to
deploy IPv6 and completely avoid the runout mess.

> Thought exercise: Under your proposed method, where does one 
> draw the line between DoS and legitimate efforts to have your 
> request hit the lottery? How many lottery tickets should 
> someone be allowed to request per what unit of time?

One.
The fact is that ARIN should not play this game. Today, you
only should apply for IP addresses once per year, or more.
There is no good reason for that basic model to change. Yes,
we may shorten time periods so that everyone has to apply once
per 3 months, but once your application is approved, we should
not create reasons to encourage more applications. If you didn't
get your full justified allocation, then the mechanisms for
handing over addresses need to be handled in an orderly fashion
so that people are not encouraged to bombard ARIN's systems in
the hopes of winning a lottery.

--Michael Dillon