ARIN, ISPs and registries

On Friday, January 17, 1997 4:52 AM, David Schwartz[SMTP:davids at wiznet.net] wrote:
@
@       Sprint, for all intents and purposes, already does operate an IP
@ registry. They receive IP allocations from Internic and then redistribute
@ them to their customers. What more do they need?
@

As I said...
        "In my opinion, Sprint is large enough to operate their
        own "registry". They could easily handle a /8."

I see that you agree...

Now...you ask..."What more do they need?"

I would recommend that they obtain their own /8 and establish
the necessary telemarketing people to handle registrations that
do not necessarily have anything to do with people buying route
announcement slots or bandwidth from them...

Tieing IP Address Registrations to companies that sell bandwidth,
short circuits what is really occurring. There should be at least
three distinct steps...

        1. Registration of IP addresses
        2. Obtaining the right to announce routes
        3. Purchasing bandwidth

You could compare this to obtaining a (1) driver's license,
(2) licensing your car, (3) operating the car.

In the current system we have various agencies trying to sell
IP addresses. Some control route announcements and some
do not. The method of directing people to their "upstream provider"
was a way to push most of the IP registry work off onto carriers.
This was like saying, get your driver's license from the car dealer
and they will give you a "dealer plate" (their IP addresses) and
you can drive around on their parking lot which just happens to
be connected to MOST of the other parking lots.

Now ARIN is ready to take that work back for a fee. I suggest
that ARIN only take on item #1 above and only for a limited
part of the IPv4 address space (one /8 or maybe several /16s).

I also suggest that carriers consider separating items #2 and #3
into distinct steps. When they do this, they may want to get into
the business of #1, but that of course is their decision. That is
the way it should be in a free market system.

No matter what happens, all of these IP Address Registries,
ARIN, APNIC, RIPE, AlterNIC, AfricNIC, SouthAmericaNIC,
CaribNIC, etc. still have to get their IN-ADDR.ARPA delegations
entered in the Root Name Servers.

I am sure that some of the Root Name Server owner/operators
will be interested to see how much these registries are going
to pay to obtain these delegations. Part of the registry fees
should obviously be paid to the people who run the Root Name
Servers for the good and stability of the Internet.

It should be noted that some ISPs are large enough to have
huge blocks of IP addresses, which they skillfully obtained
from the InterNIC. Those ISPs can go directly to the Root Name
Servers to secure their allocations. They are registries in their
own right, even though they may not have the public exposure
that ARIN will have because of the Network Solutions, Inc.
funding.

@       The authority is already there for them (and other ISPs) to
@ allocate IPs to non-customers, including those who don't even have an
@ Internet connection. Someone (David Conrad?) recently cited that RFC on
@ this list.
@
@       If anything, this pricing plan will increase the incentive for
@ ISPs to act more like registries -- after all, it will now be more
@ expensive for people to get their IPs 'direct'. So I think what you are
@ asking for is already there.
@

Great...

You might be interested to know that several ISPs have told
me that people are already calling asking to "pay" for their IP
addresses to make sure they do not lose them.

One of the good things that will come of these developments
is more education on the part of the consumers. Some people
think that they have their own IP addresses, when in fact they
do not. They are going to find that they can not buy what they
thought was theirs at any price.

The demand for "provider independent" IPv4 addresses is going
to go through the roof. Just as with the explosive growth of the
.COM domain, if the Internet community does not deploy a
structure to handle this growth, many customers will get poor
service.

Everyone seems willing to re-live the history of Network Solutions, Inc.
doing on the job training to handle the growth of domain registrations
without helping to spread the work to other registries. In my
opinion, now is the time for people to learn from this past experience
and to encourage the launch of numerous ARINs.

Unfortunately, the IANA only seems to be willing to help certain
companies get launched...why is that...?

--
Jim Fleming
UNETY Systems, Inc.
Naperville, IL

e-mail:
JimFleming at unety.net
JimFleming at unety.net.s0.g0 (EDNS/IPv8)