[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: Whois Authentication Alternatives

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 07:53:50AM -0400, Lee Dilkie wrote:
> I think he's asking for *respect* not *special status* or rights. Having
> read this list for over a year now, I can point to many postings that
> definitely have a lack of respect for those Legacy holders that
> pioneered the network you are using.

I respect 99.99% of the legacy holders; but a few bad apples have
generated much of the discussion.  Like any large group, there are
always a few who deserve no respect.

We often talk about the large group of "Legacy Holders", but to me
that does them all a disservice.  There are really three subgroups of
interest:

* Small holders.  This is anyone who doesn't meet ARIN's current
  criteria.  The people with a single /24, for example.

  I personally have no interest in ever taking their space away.
  There are two reasons, I see it as a reasonable "reward" for being
  an early adopter; and second to recover it would do no good.
  Recovering a single /24 here or there because someone is using
  16 of 256 IP's would leave ARIN with a pile of discontiguous /24's
  that it couldn't give out with the current policy.  A lot of effort
  for little to no community benefit.

  I do think this group should have a contract with ARIN, and pay a
  small ($100 or under) fee per year to keep whois and in-addr.arpa
  working.

* Assignments.  This is anyone who would receive an Assignment under
  ARIN's current policies.  An "end user" if you will.

  My feelings here are generally similar to the small holders.  I
  have no interest in taking space away from this group or undergoing
  a major auditing campaign.  If you managed to get a /20 for your
  business back in the day so be it.  In particular, I don't want
  to audit them to current standards, it's not worth the time and
  effort.

  However, there are some large assignments I think should be
  audited, but audited to a different standard than we have today.
  Roughly I think anyone with a /16 or larger block in the assignment
  class who is using 25% or less should have to return 50% of the
  space.  That to me would make them comply with the spirit of 2050.

  This group needs to have a contract with ARIN, and I see no reason
  the standard assignment fees shouldn't apply.

* Allocations.  This is anyone who would receive an allocation under
  ARIN's current policies, basically Internet service providers of
  one form or another.  This would likely include many universities,
  ISP's, and a few big corporations.

  These groups should meet all current standards, but the requirements
  to do so should be phased in.  For instance, they would be required
  to meet all current standards in 5 years, with ARIN coming up
  with an appropriate "sliding scale" of compliance over those 5
  years.

  Why?  Well, there are a number of entities sitting on huge swaths of
  address space they likely aren't using.  We've seen with voluntary
  returns a /8 turned in for a /16.  That's 255 /16's that can be given
  out to other people, and that is waste worth tracking down.  A good
  number of these entities have come back to ARIN looking for more space
  and/or have acquired ARIN space via merger and to have one block be
  "special" or "exempt" makes no sense.  Several of these companies
  have used these blocks to be actively anti-competitive in a way that
  flies in the face of RFC2050.  I can think of at least one company
  that openly advertised a /24 with your T1, no justification required.
  To have thumbed their nose at the community in the past in such ways
  has earned them a lack of respect when it comes to the stewardship
  of Internet Resources.

  These legacy blocks should have SWIP or RWHOIS, should be included
  in the consideration of any new requested, and should fall under
  the standard fee structure.

  Heck, a good number of the larger blocks are now 2 or 3 merger
  or divesture steps from the original requestor.  Treating them
  as special is not respecting an early adopter, it's rewarding a
  business man trying to use legacy status to flaunt 2050 in a way
  his competitors can't.

Perhaps we would do better to divide these groups when we have the
discussion.  We seem to have a lot of the first group on the list
speaking out, when most of my concern is with the third group.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
-------------- 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/20080826/1da7d87a/attachment.sig>