[arin-ppml] Results of Transfer Proposal Survey

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net 
> [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Member Services
> Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 8:37 AM
> To: arin-ppml at arin.net; arin-announce at arin.net
> Subject: [arin-ppml] Results of Transfer Proposal Survey
> 
> 
> Subscribers to the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List were invited to 
> participate last week in a policy proposal survey. The ARIN Advisory 
> Council, working on an update to Policy Proposal 2008-2, IPv4 
> Transfer 
> Policy Proposal, sponsored the survey in order to gain 
> additional input.
>  
> Two hundred plus subscribers to the mail list participated. 
> The results 
> of the survey are available on the ARIN website at:  
> http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/surveys/ 
> and in pdf  version at: 
> http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/surveys/pdfs/survey_summa
ry_08242008.pdf 


>This input will be added to that gained during the ARIN XXI meeting in 
>Denver, the Caribbean sector meeting in Jamaica and the upcoming 
>Caribbean sector meeting in the Bahamas. Additional discussion of the 
>proposal will take place at the ARIN XXII Public Policy and Members 
>Meeting being held 15-17 October in Los Angeles, California.

>Please note that the Advisory Council continues to seek input on this 
>issue.

This survey was biased from the beginning - it omitted one
key question at the beginning:  Do you want a liberalized
transfer policy at all?  That is why the number of persons
responding from the PPL was so small - 11% - because if you
were opposed a liberalized policy, you could see where the
survey was going and undoubtedly most people opposed to
a liberalized policy abandoned the survey before completion.

It's actually much more significant that question 11 had a
13% NO response!  Since the survey was SO biased, it's 
amazing that that many people opposed to a liberalized policy 
actually made it through the survey at all!

Where the usefulness of this survey is, though, is in 
telling us WHO is making up the pro-liberalization camp.

The significant responses are as follows:

Question 11:  86% in favor.  OK well we already knew
that because very few people opposing liberalized transfers
would be completing the survey after getting to this question.

Question 10:  80% in favor.  What this tells us is that
those in favor of liberalization want the "RIR stamp of
approval" on their transaction.  One more, this is a
no-brainer; it should have been obvious prior to the survey
that people calling for a "legacy number broker" separate from the RIR
were the fringe element.

Neither 11 or 10 tell us anything we don't already know
and are more distractor questions than anything else.

Question 9:  53% in favor of limiting multiple requests, 47%
against.  This is where it gets interesting - what this is
telling us is that the pro-liberalized transfer camp is itself
split over the idea of allowing freewheeling-and-dealing of
IPv4 numbers.

Question 8: 58% for current holders being allowed limited
deaggregation, the rest want no limits.  This is also
indicative of that split in the pro-liberalized transfer camp.
What it is telling us is HOW each camp wants things to proceed.

The pro-wheeling-and-dealing camp are speculators - their aim
is to make a lot of money brokering large blocks, splitting them
up, and selling them.  Any kind of restrictions would crimp their
plans.  But they are in the minority.  The bulk of the pro-liberalized
transfer folks are just wanting to make money off holdings that
they have, but aren't using, or have but could easily give up
by renumbering.  They want limited deaggregation because that
is all they need - and since they are planning on staying in
the game long-haul, they don't want to screw themselves by allowing
unlimited growth of routing entries in the BGP table.

Question 7: 74% in favor of ARIN having control over limiting
deaggregation.  Once more, a no-brainer.  These are the same folks
who want ARIN's blessing in Question #10.  Why would you be in
favor of having ARIN operating a listing service but not giving
them control over the stuff listed on it?  That's why the % split
on this question was within a few points of the split on #10

Question 6: 71% in favor of prequals on need.  No brainer here.
This is basically a restatement of the idea in #7 and #10 - give
ARIN control.

Question 5: Nearly even split on prequals of address holders wanting
to sell space.  This basically indicates the level of discomfort of
the pro-liberalization camp who are NOT speculators.  Obviously if
you're a speculator then you don't care where the IPv4 is coming from,
whether the holder meets prequal or not.  The only people who would
care are the ones who are pro-liberalization only for the reason
that they want to see more space freed up, or perhaps sell off some of
their own holdings.  The majority of -those- people are not happy
with the idea of allowing un-prequalified people out there selling
off IPv4.

Question 4:  Uninteresting question - nobody cares what happens
after the deal is done.

Question 3:  This is like Question 9 and 8 - it merely shows the
split in the pro-liberalization camp, but it does indicate the
bulk of the speculators are coming from the legacy arena because
obviously if legacy holders didn't make up a large number of survey
respondents, they wouldn't care if the legacy holders were shafted
by an LRSA and the response would throw the legacy holders under
the bus by a stronger majority voting yes.

Question 2: No brainer, basically a restatement of question #11

Question 1: Expiration date.  This is like 9, 8 and 3.  It shows
the split in the pro-liberalization camp.  Obviously, speculators aren't
going to want an expiration date of the liberalized policy.  But the
non-speculators in favor of a liberalized policy are more evenly split
on the idea of an expiration date.

In summary, while the survey illustrated the internal split
within the pro-liberalization camp, it still doesen't tell us
what is really important - how many people really are in favor
of a liberalized policy.  It in no way indicates that there is
a majority of people in favor of a liberalized transfer policy.

A more even-handed and unbiased survey would have been more
useful.

Ted