[ppml] Policy Proposal 2002-3: Micro-Assignments forMultihomed Networks

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 10:54:52AM -0400, Eric Van Tol wrote:
> With this reasoning, I suppose it would be okay to go out and steal cars
> because some people find it too difficult to purchase a car on their
> own, or lack the finances to purchase one.

While I don't want to defend his reasoning, an interesting new
problem has occured.

Many ISP's, including my employer have recently had customers who
found ARIN's processes so "difficult" that they "bought" an IP
address range on EBay (or other locations).  These were in fact
stolen.  Sadly, these customers had no idea IP's couldn't be bought
or sold, or that they were being sold stolen goods.

So, to extend your analogy, while it's not ok to steal cars, if car
manufactures drove up the cost of cars and / or parts, or otherwise
made them difficult to come by it would cause more people to steal
cars and try and sell them as legitimate used autos.

I do think that legitimate (but clueless) business people are being
driven away from ARIN to "chop shops" to get IP's is a problem that
needs to be addressed.  There are several prongs to that attack though:

* Enforcement, get the people who are stealing address space in the
  first place.

* Education, make it clear to non-techies what they need to do to
  get address space.  This is going to be an uphill battle.

* Smaller allocations.  ARIN needs to allocate down to /24's to end
  users.  Business people are tried of their provider going Chapter 7
  and being forced to renumber.  I know some places that had to renumber
  3-4 times in a single year, at great expense, because their providers
  had their own problems.  Many can't justify a /19, but are quite happy
  to buy one because it's far cheaper than renumbering.

* Streamlined processes.  A business, getting their first /24 from arin
  should be able to get it all from a web site.  Fill out a form, enter
  a credit card for the payment, and boom in e-mail you get a /24.  Make
  them send in tons of paperwork, drag it out for weeks, give them a
  process with uncertian deadlines and they will turn to the theif on
  e-bay who promises them IP's as soon as they get paid.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-ppml/attachments/20030822/2a86c839/attachment.sig>