[arin-ppml] Alternative to arbitrary transfers

[Jeremy H.Griffith]

On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 13:56:45 -0700, "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at ipinc.net> 
wrote:

>My alternative is as follows:

This is a breath of fresh air.  Well done, Ted!

>1) ARIN continue to use moral persuasion on the legacy holders who
>have excessive assignments but are not paying anything to renumber
>or reduce their utilizations and return blocks.

Back in The Day, you got a Class A /8 if you were IBM, MIT,
or Sun.  There weren't many of those given out.

You got a Class B /16 if you were an ISP or an enterprise
that used many systems (more than 256).  This should be a 
very good area to focus on.  A lot of those who got /16s
would have been happy with /21s, but those weren't available 
then.

You got a Class C /24 if you had a pulse and knew what an
IP address was.  ;-)  There were many more of those out,
but recovery of them should be a last resort, considering
the routing table explosion that would happen if they were
all routed in BGP.

>2) ARIN embark on a project to identify abandoned and stale unused
>IPv4, and return it to the assignment pool for reassignment.

If it's legacy space, see above.  If it's RSA space where
nobody is paying fees any more, doesn't ARIN already do
this?  I would hope so... at least for /21 and shorter.

>3) ARIN institute a "bounty" program where someone who identifies
>and provides supporting paperwork to "prove" a specific IPv4 block
>is truly abandoned OR is in use ILLEGALLY is given a credit on their
>yearly bill. (ie: the person here is basically doing the work that ARIN
>staff would have to do to certify an abandoned block is really abandoned)

Maybe, but it sounds like outsourcing a job that ARIN
is well equipped to do itself.  I certainly think there
should be a very easy way for "whistleblowers" to tell
ARIN about fraud, but paying them for it is dicey, IMHO.

>4) ARIN modify pricing schedules to more closely bring prices of
>IPv4 addressing in alignment across ALL allocations - in other words,
>remove the discount for ISP's with large quantities of IPv4 - and
>institute a temporary "credit" program to those ISP's who return
>blocks they are already paying for.
>
>Check the current price list - the largest holders pay the least
>amount of money per IPv4 address.  Big disincentive to returning
>IPv4.

Yes.  This is a good one, probably enough to put runout
off by ten years all by itself.  ;-)  Of course, many
ARIN members work for the companies that would pay more, 
don't they?  But I'm sure that won't influence them...
if it's for the good of the community... right?  (I'm
not being sarcastic here, just a little nervous.)

>5) ARIN continue to apply good stewardship to IPv4 from these 4 sources
>such as combining small blocks to larger aggregates before reassignment.

Yes again.  If people do give them legacy Class C's back,
they'd have to have eight adjacent ones to make up a /21,
and that seems unlikely.  But they might get /23s and /22s.

>I don't see these alternatives in any way as creating a transfer
>market - yet I see them as being able to generate reusable IPv4.
>I would certainly like to have ARIN give them a try and prove they
>DON'T work before embarking on a transfer program.

Agreed.  These are all good ideas.  Thank you for putting 
to rest the tiresome neocon argument that it's their way or
the world ends.  The only thing that baffles me is why ARIN
staff, and the AC, didn't come up with these options already...

I'd add one more, that ARIN reduce the minimum allocation
size from /21, based on an estimate of routing impact vs.
longer availability to small users, possibly in steps
down to a /24 minimum.

Thanks again for coming up with some positive alternatives!

--JHG <jhg at omsys.com>