[ppml] NANOG IPv4 Exhaustion BoF

[David Williamson]

On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 01:01:23PM -0800, David Conrad wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mar 4, 2008, at 9:27 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> To be blunt, this strikes me as astoundingly hallucinatory.
> 
> Without some form of transfer policy, ARIN simply becomes irrelevant  
> as address consumers go to the "black" market in order to meet their  
> requirements.
> 
> With a transfer policy, ARIN _may_ retain some relevance as a source  
> of "title" information, but a lot depends on the restrictions ARIN  
> attempts to impose.  Make the policy too restrictive, and people will  
> go elsewhere.
> 
> In the end, with or without a transfer policy, you're still out of  
> "free" IPv4 addresses and businesses will do what they feel is  
> necessary to get around unenforceable bureaucratic rules.

Let me clarify the context of the "set in stone" comment, since I was
involved in that discussion.

At IPv4 runout in the ARIN region, the world does not get set in stone,
but ARIN's records become set in stone, since there is, at present, no
way to transfer those records between parties.  Since there will
clearly be transfers, regardless of what ARIN policies exist, it would
be very poor stewardship of the IPv4 space.  Availability of new space,
or the lack thereof, does not terminate ARIN's responsibility to this
community, nor does it end the stewardship role.

I entirely concur that businesses will do what they need to do.  I
think it is up to us to make it easy for businisses to do what they
need to do, so that the Right Thing naturally occurs.

More specifialy, I support this policy as written.  I think there are
some flaws in it, but those can be corrected as the actual
implementation time approaches, and before demand gets very large.  We
need some sort of transfer policy that balances corporate needs with
the tendency towards a speculative market.  This might be a good start
at that.

-David