[ppml] NANOG IPv4 Exhaustion BoF

[Owen DeLong]

As most of you already know, members of the ARIN AC conducted a BoF
session at NANOG 42 to try and gather additional community feedback
about IPv4 Exhaustion, and, specifically, the AC Authored IPv4
transfer policy.

Due to last minute scheduling, the BoF was held at a time which
conflicted with the Peering BoF and the IPv6 Tutorial.  Despite
these conflicts, the BoF was surprisingly well attended and we
were able to have a good and productive discussion.

Early in the discussion, it was discovered that most present had
not come to a clear understanding of the Transfer Policy Proposal.
Some explanation and clarification was provided by various members
of the AC.

Some key provisions that were discussed were:
	+	Requirement for both parties in a transfer to
		sign an RSA

		This is in keeping with preserving
		contractual parity in the transfer process.

	+	Intent of the listing service

		The details of the listing service were omitted
		from the policy proposal due to time constraints
		and to preserve some flexibility to work with ARIN
		staff on the design and criteria to fully meet the
		needs of ARIN and the community.

		Generally, the expectation is that the listing
		service data will be as open and public as possible
		with the intent of allowing as much information as
		possible to potential transferors/transferees prior
		to engaging in the process.

	+	Effects on Current policy

		Current merger/acquisition/divestiture policy remains
		unchanged.  The proposed re-titling of the policy
		focused on merger/acquisition merely as an oversight,
		not in an intent to change the handling of such
		transfers.  Hopefully this will be addressed in the
		next revision of the policy proposal.

	+	Implementation date

		IANA Free pool runout was chosen because it is
		objectively factual. ARIN runout will be staggered
		with ARIN unable to issue larger blocks before it
		runs out of smaller ones.  Additionally, using IANA
		runout allows the policy and associated market to
		kind of spin up and gain some experience before
		ARIN runs out.

	+	Potential Legal Issues

		Nobody present at the BoF was prepared or qualified
		to speak on behalf of ARIN from a legal perspective.
		As a result, questions regarding legal ramifications
		were deferred as out of scope for the BoF session.
		ARIN Counsel will present a review of the proposed
		policy at the ARIN meeting in Denver. It will also
		be posted to the PPML.

In general, the idea of a transfer policy was received with a neutral
to positive response.  There were no strong negative reactions
expressed.

There were several questions about likely efficacy and whether this
policy would actually accomplish anything.

Leo Bicknell made the point that without this policy or something
like it, the world becomes set in stone after IPv4 runout.  Haves
have and have nots have not and there's no way for that to change.
With this proposal, there's at least the possibility if folks can
come to agreement on the subject.


Thanks to everyone who attended the BoF.  Your input was very useful
to the AC.  I encourage anyone interested in further participating
in the policy process to subscribe to the ARIN PPML
(http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/ppml) and post your comments
there.

Respectfully submitted,

Owen DeLong
ARIN AC