[ppml] Markets, pricing, transparency, 2008-2 / 8.3.9

[Scott Leibrand]

Cliff Bedore wrote:
> Regarding a "market" for IPv4 addresses, I still have not heard any
> disadvantage to ARIN staying completely out of the market part and just have a
> policy that allows one more method of acquiring addresses.
> 
> As I understand current policy, there are basically two ways to get addresses
> 
> 1)  Ask ARIN with appropriate justification
> 
> 2)  Buy/merge with a company and get the addresses as a part of that
> transaction (again with some justification to ARIN
> 
> It seems to me that all that 2008-2 needs to do is add a third method once the
> IANA free pool is gone.
> 
> 3) Party 1 offers to transfer to Party 2 some block of addresses.  Party 1
> has the right to offer and Party 2 justifies the right to receive the
> addresses.  No market, no ARIN involvement with SEC, just ARIN approving use
> of a block of addresses.

What you're describing here seems pretty similar to the APNIC and RIPE 
proposals.  Personally I feel that those proposals go a bit too far, in 
that they will encourage excessive deaggregation and impose externality 
costs on everyone holding a full routing table.  Specifically, the cost 
of acquiring IPv4 addresses will encourage transferees to acquire just 
enough addresses to meet their immediate needs, and transferors will be 
able to arbitrarily subdivide their netblocks to meet that demand.  This 
will likely result in a large and unnecessary uptick in the rate at 
which new routes are added to the DFZ.  Without some sort of 
backpressure (a market in routing slots) I think that some form of 
deaggregation restriction, such as that proposed in 2008-2, is needed to 
constrain that.

> Why is this not a simple way to handle the end of life address management of
> v4 addresses?  ARIN gets their fees just like now so they remain viable but
> have no interaction with the "market" and its associated problems.

Another option, that you may be alluding to, would be to have ARIN do 
the transfer policy, but leave the listing services to others (i.e. 
eBay).  That would certainly be one viable option.  Personally I prefer 
to do both: have ARIN develop an optional listing service, making it 
voluntary so that organizations can engage in private party transactions 
  or use another listing service (eBay if they want).

-Scott