[arin-ppml] Internet Fairness

Sun Dec 21 14:46:25 EST 2014

So why then after ripe-604 has been implemented for several months in their region are they not seeing that happen.  They left some controls in their polices for RIPE to handle that if it happens.  

Steven L Ryerse
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-----Original Message-----
From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Frank Bulk
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2014 9:38 AM
To: 'Adam Thompson'; Randy Carpenter; ARIN-PPML at arin.net
Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Internet Fairness

For those of us in the "NAT is bad"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v26BAlfWBm8) camp, the risk I perceive with a purely capitalistic model is that many organizations will sell their IPv4 address space to the highest bidder (who may hoard it) and even more NAT will be deployed.  While the effects of CGN are documented (i.e.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7021), I think that many network operators will (choose to) ignore those (to the detriment of their end users) or capitalize on that by charging extra to those who don't want to go through CGN.  In reaction, applications and services will be further modified to address CGN, the opposite of my preferred approach towards end-to-end communication.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Adam Thompson
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 9:43 PM
To: Randy Carpenter; ARIN-PPML at arin.net
Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Internet Fairness

On 14-12-19 08:02 PM, Randy Carpenter wrote:
> A capitalistic model does not work for a finite resource like IP
addresses.
I'm not even a Smithian capitalist, and I see the first problem here:

Why doesn't it work?

Market stability will be reached according to every economic theory I've read, regardless of whether the resources are finite or not. It may be that stability means a gradually-increasing price for a while followed by rapid inflation, but estimates I've heard posit that IPv6 deployment will be widespread by the time the market price would otherwise skyrocket.

> All that would happen is that a large company could just buy up all of 
> the
space, and then set its own price for everyone else.
Really?  How many universities and large organizations have /8s, /9s, and /10s, that they would almost immediately start the process of monetizing?  It's "easy" (*cough*) - switch to NAT'd private addresses, switch to IPv6, whatever.  Heck, simple disaggregation of large blocks would release tons of /16 and longer prefixes based on the usage patterns I've seen at most large organizations.  ISPs are not generally included in this, they tend to use what they have. IBM, HP/Compaq/DEC, MIT, Princeton, Harvard, etc., etc., however, are the poster children for low usage.  They just don't have a big enough incentive to worry about it yet.

Also, see my previous posts for references to academic treatment of the fact that hoarding *isn't a bad thing* in the free market.  Of course, this isn't a free market yet, so there's an argument to be made there...

> How's that for "fairness" ?? I don't see how you can argue for 
> treating
smaller orgs more fairly by proposing to allow large companies to set whatever ridiculous price they want.
The playing field is then level - all new entrants get to simply pay the going rate, with no (perceived?) favouritism towards incumbents or large entrants.  This assumes there's a reasonable relationship between the price of a /16 and the price of a /24, of course. Smith's "invisible hand" should, in theory, assure this...

> I still don't get the needs argument at all. If an org can't show that 
> it
needs the addresses, then why do they need the addresses?
Why should I have to disclose to a third party exactly what my plans are?  Even the IRS (or CRA, here) doesn't need that level of detail.  
I'm sure the NSA knows exactly what my plans are, but if I have deep enough pockets, I don't see why this resource - almost alone among all common resources both natural and artificial - should be forbidden to me.

The only other example I can think of that is widely-known is New York (and elsewhere) Taxicab licenses... and almost everyone except taxicab license owners thinks that system is, shall we say, suboptimal.

All of the points above here are posited on the fact that the US is, at least supposedly, a Smithian capitalist society that embraces the free market.
I happen to think capitalism is fundamentally broken, but at the same time I'd rather let the market control what I can and can't do rather than a handful of regulators who I *know* don't have my interests at heart.  (Nor is that their mandate, I don't mean they're behaving
maliciously!)

In essence, above is theory, below is practical.

Moving on to problems in the areas of policy, bias, and technical:
> I agree that in the past it was difficult for small non-multihomed 
> orgs to
get space. But now that the minimum is a /24, it is so ridiculously easy.
Does multihoming, per se, meet the (v4) needs test after the policy changes in 2014?  If yes, I can live with the situation.  If no, then small entities are still getting screwed.
As a small-to-medium-sized enterprise, I probably NAT my entire company behind one or two (possibly not even contiguous) IP addresses, with maybe another half dozen publicly-visible servers. But if I want to be multi-homed, I must first use >64 public IPs, and come up with a reason to use >128 public IPs within a year. What if I just need those 6 or 7 IPs to be highly available?

Under the current NRPM, the only apparent way a small org can multi-home
(v4) is to get a reassignment from an ISP, at which point they're stuck with that ISP pretty much forever, barring a painful and expensive renumbering process (say, ~1000 incoming static VPN tunnels, not all of which are under their direct control?).

(I also note that the multihoming justification for IPv6 direct assignment is still there, even as the IPv4 justification is gone.)

This is the primary example today of how the NRPM is heavily biased towards large organizations and SPs in the end-stages of IPv4 runout.  
Meanwhile, if there were no needs test for /24s, and a healthy transfer market, the organization would have the *choice* of paying for PI space or choosing alternate workarounds with higher TCO (e.g. DNS-based load-balancing, manual load-balancing, etc.). Right now, the small organization that doesn't wish to become a sharecropper for their incumbent SP is - as far as I can tell from reading the NRPM tonight - S.O.L.

The fact they can still get a direct IPv6 allocation is meaningless until IPv6 deployment reaches some reasonable density of penetration (>40%, roughly), and I don't hear anyone here claiming that will happen until we actually run out of IPv4 space, and SPs are no longer able to acquire v4 space on demand.  Small organizations already can't acquire
v4 space on demand - but they don't carry much weight with SPs.

Yes, the reasoning here is *partially* circular, because there are two related problems converging to screw the small organization (which group includes most of my customers, and in fact, most businesses in Canada).

Another way to view this, which has some relevancy to the problem (mentioned earlier today) with separation between ARIN and NANOG, unlike APNIC and RIPE which largely combine those functions, is that this wouldn't be an issue if global routing tables carried prefixes longer than /24.  The main reason that's the case today - as far as I can tell
- is TCAM space on hardware routers, which directly translates into: Money.

[Rant about certain short-sighted & self-centered ISPs removed, didn't add any value to the discussion, no matter how much it made me feel better.]

Right now we have this mixture of regulatory oversight and "market" 
forces that indirectly control said regulatory oversight... this isn't IMHO a healthy model, and any steps we can take to move either to a pure regulatory function *or* a pure market-driven regime should improve the situation.  Given that ARIN is located in the U.S., a pure market-driven regime seems like a better idea right now.

Regardless, small organizations are - right now - impossibly disadvantaged if they want PI space for any reason, especially multi-homing.

If I've misread the NRPM v2014.4 (2014-Sep-17), feel free to correct my 
interpretation... the only provision for low-usage multihoming of IPv4 I 
could find is 4.2.3.6, which is commercially punitive, at least in my 
region.

-- 
-Adam Thompson
  athompso at athompso.net
  Cell: +1 204 291-7950
  Fax: +1 204 489-6515

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