[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 2008-6: Emergency TransferPolicy for IPv4 Addresses - Last Call

[Randy Bush]

> You would agree with the following two statements then?
>    - ARIN would function better as a title registrar.
>    - The free market can allocate resources best.

you folk seem to love putting words in others' mouths.  amazing.

life is change.  get used to it.  and it is also not all black and 
white, good girls and bad guys, ...  it's a complicated mess with a lot 
of wetware doing complicated things.  that's why we get the big bucks :-).

the v4 free pool is fast running out.  therefore, arin's business as 
allocating 'new' space from that free pool in a strange fashion (read 
inhibiting new entrants) is over.  we don't have to like it, we just 
have to live with it.

arin can continue that strange life in ipv6.  though it may find that 
allocating /32s means repeat customers will be at a low rate and that 
the fact that arin is actually in the business of leasing integers will 
be more and more plainly apparent, for which there will be consequences.

whether arin will fulfill the needed function of a title registrar is a 
choice.  whether it will do 'better' at that than as a renter of 
integers is an amusing, but not very well defined, question.  whether 
arin will do better at it than some other party, who will surely arise 
should arin fail at that function, is also a matter of conjecturbation.

we have a good real-world example of how well a totally unmeasured and 
unregulated free market operates.  let's hope we have jobs next year. 
but, like most things in life, this does not imply that the opposite is 
true.

my guess is that neither a free market in ipv4 space nor an effort to 
'reclaim' ipv4 space will have much long term effect except to provide 
really good opportunities to piss off and polarize our community and 
give the 'suits' good reason to intervene in arin's policy process.  the 
ip4 space that will be traded, reclaimed, or hijacked is not likely 
large enough to make much difference.

but if you really think this is an important avenue, i wanna watch you 
get back the many /8s (more than all of china has, and unused on the 
internet!) given to the us military in a late quiet side deal, and that 
is by far the biggest chunk.  keep your eye on the doughnut, not upon 
the hole.

randy