[ppml] The WIANA registry

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

>1. If they are assigned later the space they hijacked, this legitimates
>hijacking and the next thing you know every mom and pop network on earth
>is going to hijack address space and try to get it legitimized. Hey, why
>not me too?

Experience shows that slippery slopes rarely work that way because there 
are usually many limiting factors that prevent things from getting out of 
hand. In this instance, I think that there is some precedent for what 
WIANA is doing with IP addresses. Their activities are not that different 
from what AMPR does with 44/8. See here for more info on AMPR 
http://www.ampr.org/amprnet.html

I think that this factor alone will prevent every mom and pop network on 
earth from trying to hijack address space.

>2. If they are not assigned the space and 1.0.0.0/8 is delegated to
>someone else they're going to whine about IANA or ARIN or whoever being
>that all-mighty evil entity that does not understand the need of the
>people blah blah.

Exactly. That's why I think that the RIR community and IANA should work 
with WIANA now to legitimize their claim for IP address space. They do 
have a legitimate claim to a globally unique block and they are totally 
unlike the normal applicants for RIR space. Whether or not their activity 
justifies a whole /8, I don't know. But looking at the way that 44/8 is 
being managed and also the way that 24/8 was issued to the cable industry, 
I expect that it is reasonable to reserve 1/8 for possible future wireless 
network growth and to issue some subset of 1/8 today.

>That's a lose-lose situation. If they could justify the space they
>should have requested it in the first place instead of hijacking it.

Clearly they did apply somewhere for address space and were turned down. 
The whole IP address allocation issue is so bloody confusing and poorly 
documented that it does not surprise me that they went off on their own.

Does any RIR have a simple and clear set of instructions for first-time 
applicants to follow that includes an appeal procedure? NO! And that is 
the crux of the problem with organizations that are not mainstream ISPs.

P.S. to WIANA:
There are archives of this past week of mailing list discussion at 
http://www.arin.net/mailing_lists/index.html
under the IP Allocations Policies Working Group.

--Michael Dillon