[arin-ppml] Legacy space holders were a big part of the community... i.e. all of it.

[John Santos]

On Sat, 23 Aug 2008, John Curran wrote:

> On Aug 21, 2008, at 2:01 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> > Paul
> > One can make a good case for a unified, consistent address governance
> > regime that would involve eliminating legacy holder's special rights  
> > and
> > bringing everyone in under the same kind of contract.
> 
> Equating absence of an agreement with "special rights" is interesting,
> but that's probably best saved for another time.
> 
> > But one cannot make the case you want to make based on appeals to "the
> > community" and "consensus." Because the legacy holders are part of  
> > "the
> > community." A big part of it, in North America. And I suspect that  
> > they
> > will never agree to be part of a "consensus" that eliminates their
> > special status.
> 
> It is a very relevant point, since almost all of those same legacy
> holders were certainly part of the consensus decision in 1993 to
> change the basic IP address structure to allow variable sized
> blocks (aka "CIDR") and the matching matching address allocation
> policies (RFC1466/RFC1518/RFC1519).  These documents state that
> an organization should receive sufficient address space to meet
> two years worth of organization need, so that we could "delay
> depletion of the IP address space".
> 
> The community of the legacy space allocation era actually already
> reached consensus years ago that variable-sized blocks were needed
> and that organizational allocations based on two years of need were
> most appropriate. They just forgot to return their own extra space,
> for reasons unknown, and at this point are best off if they can
> simultaneously deny that they were part of the community that were
> involved in these decisions but somehow were still part of the team
> that earned their legacy allocation by helping build the Internet...
> good luck with that.

You are assuming that legacy holders are hanging on to "extra"
space and refusing to return it.  That is certainly not the case.

As an existence proof, I am a legacy holder and am using most of
my space.  (As of today, 134 of 256 addresses staticly allocated,
plus a bunch of DHCP space.)

Under the rules in effect at the time I applied, my company was
entitled to a class C (/24.)  What scares me is the implication
or possibility that, despite the fact that I am still entitled to
a /24 under those rules, I am not entitled to a /22 under the
current rules and if I sign on with ARIN, I risk losing my /24.

A lot of people on this list seem perfectly happy with changing
the rules in the middle of the game and applying them retroactively
to others.  In most or all cases, these people have nothing to
lose under the new rules and a possibility of financial gain
by them.  I am refering specifically to ISPs that, despite their
protestations that addresses are not property, will cheerfully
lease them to me from their own allocations, forcing me to
renumber and locking me into their service (unless I want to
renumber again in order to move to a competing ISP.)

If you can guarantee that I won't be forced to give up my
/24 as long as I continue to use it, and "continue to use it"
won't be redefined out from under me, then I would consider
signing the LRSA.  Otherwise, I feel I would be taking a
huge risk for no perceivable benefit.

The $100/year isn't an issue, and I have no intention of ever
selling the addresses on Ebay or anywhere else.


> 
> /John
> (most certainly speaking individually)
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-- 
John Santos
Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
781-861-0670 ext 539