[ppml] Counsel statement on Legacy assignments?

[William Herrin]

On 10/6/07, Peter Eisch <peter at boku.net> wrote:
> "As a steward of the Internet community ARIN would like to ask you for your
> stewardship back to the community.  If you have unused address blocks that
> you're able and willing to return to the pool for others to potentially use,
> the Internet community would be appreciative.  With the pending IPv4
> exhaustion, your contribution back to the community can help extend the open
> availability for others to use."

Hi Peter,

The problem with a letter like this is that while this is the message
we want to convey, its intellectually dishonest and we will get called
on it. Let me explain what I mean.

If you release address space back to ARIN's pool, there is somewhere
north of an 80% chance that next year it appears within an allocation
to one of a few hundred megacorps that has a voracious appetite for IP
addresses. ARIN's process is very top-heavy in that respect; at the
rate it makes single /20 and longer allocations it could continue for
decades. Its the big allocations to folks who already hold a lot of
addresses which are expected to exhaust the free pool in three years.
The odds favor your old addresses showing up at Verizon, AT&T or
another like them. Worse, under ARIN's price structure those guys
don't even have to pay more for it... Just the xxlarge annual fee.

Megacorps being what they are, you or someone you know has in the past
been screwed or treated like a peon by the one who ended up with your
old IP addresses. That's a pretty foul outcome for someone who has
generously returned addresses. I'd go so far as to call it a betrayal
of trust: It would be like volunteering to pick up trash on a highway
like you see the signs for, only to have the county come in and turn
it into a toll road.

Then, when we go back for round two, we'll have zero credibility.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



-- 
William D. Herrin                  herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr.                        Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004