INTERVIEW comments by Conrad

[Joe Baptista]

Di I detect an unhappy camper ???

On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, David Conrad wrote:

> To be clear, I never gave an interview to Baptista (even the idea what he is
> a reporter is laughable, see http://www.kkc.net/baptista/ or his
> 'contributions' to the ICANN mailing lists as to why).

Well obviously that URL points to an authoritative news source.  Obviously
the reporting there challenges the standards establish by some of the best
news sources in the industry.

I never said you gave me an interview.  But you did make those comments.
The interview was provided by Vint Cerf who has answered the question I
originally posed to you concerning your comments.

> What I did do
> (stupid me) is respond to an erroneous assertion of his (among various other
> innuendos and insinuations) on the cybertelecom mailing list (is a mailing
> list a conference?),

Yes you were stupid.  If you don't want to be quoted it is prudent to
"shut up" and not say anything.

> specifically, Baptista stated:
>
> >>> according to ARIN the smallest allocation has a rental value of $2,500 USD
> >>> per year.

maybe you might want to provide the full message.  partial quotes do not
make the content or intent of a message.

The actual claim that was made was by a third party against you.  The
claim was that during your days in asia (japan) you profited from the
allocation of IP space in the asia pacific while north americans got IP
space for free.

> I merely pointed out that the registries do not revoke allocations if an
> organization does not pay the allocation fee.  The fees charged by the
> registries are for the service of allocation and are approved by the
> memberships of the registries.  The fee, at least historically, has not been
> a "rental".

There is no history here to speak of.  The fees were only recently
imposed.  Furthermore your fees were not approved by those who hold the
allocations.  Your membership (ARIN) is also not very representative of
the actual population holding allocations.

I believe the point I was making was the fact that small organizations
with small allocations were carrying the burden of fees while large
organizations with /8 blocks were paying less per IP.  Thats significant.

But my main question here was why did you make the statement that ARIN was
unable to get those allocations back if no payment were made.  And Vint
Cerf - who I am beginning to suspect is a gentleman - much to my surprise
- was able to answer the question.  I'll post the URL here when I publish
it.

> Now, with respect to your mail:
>
> On 9/23/02 7:22 AM, "Trevor Paquette" <Trevor.Paquette at TeraGo.ca> wrote:
> > I've always thought that IP space was a luxury, not a right.
>
> (As an aside, the assertion I was responding was in the context of valuation
> of address space.)
>
> I tend to view IP space as niether.  IP space is an abstraction that has
> value depending on context.  Address space obtained from a regional registry
> has value in its uniqueness.  ISPs can provide additional value to those
> unique addresses by routing them.  On the other hand, what is the value of
> 10/8?

well according to arin a /8 is less expensive per IP then a /19.  Go
figure.  /19 must be prettier or sometyhing silly like that.

> IP space (v4 or v6) are merely integers.  The service of insuring uniqueness
> and routability provide value to those integers.  One can argue that both of
> those value inducing properties are luxuries and I'm sure someone will argue
> they are rights, but that is not an argument I'd be interested in getting
> into.

This sounds like alot of jibberish and an attempt at rationalization.

> > What is ARIN actively doing to RECLAIM IP space??
>
> This question would be more appropriately directed at ARIN staff (who will
> jump in, if what I say is in error).  However, my understanding is that
> efforts are actively underway to "clean" the database as a first step.  Of
> course, attempting to 'reclaim' address space from someone unwilling to give
> it up (and who has contractual agreements with ISPs to route the space) will
> be the tricky part.  As roughly 45% of the address space (according to the
> weekly routing table analysis sent out by APNIC) has not been allocated,
> rushing into lawsuits is probably not what ARIN needs to do right now
> (IMHO).

It sound to me like an attempt to do a fast slight of hand on existing IP
address space holders.  I understand ARIN's reluctance to get into
lawsuits.  But maybe a union of IP address holders should be organized to
do just that.  There is no rationalization for charging anyone $2,500 for
a class C or B or A.  All ARIN does is the reverse dns delegations.  And
that is not worth $2,500 for a /19.

Also your reluctance to answer my questions is in itself questionable.
May I remind you that you are an official of ARIN and in that capacity you
are accountable.

But it's a free world - and if you don't want to be quoted again my advice
to you is shut up.

Now I will save your comment as I think they will be an excellent
insertion into a future article on IPv4 and IPv6.  Thank you for your time
and my thanks to trevor.  Like a hunting dog it seem trevor has spooked
the fox into the open and all guns are aimed.

cheers and my pleasure
joe baptista