[arin-ppml] Does this apply to Transfers too?

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> What it will boil down to is that some executive will call 
> the NetAdmin in to his office look him in the eye and say 
> "Are you absolutely darned sure this is accurate" and the 
> NetAdmin will say "Yes, I wouldn't have written it down if it 
> weren't." and the (COO or some such) will sign the affidavit 
> based on the word of the NetAdmin who the COO trusts.  

What world are you living in? The executives who did that in 
Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and others, are now sitting in jail.
The Sarbanes-Oxley act is not just law, but common corporate
practice even for companies that are not incorporated under
U.S. jusrisdiction.

I don't expect any corporate officer to sign off on this
kind of attestation until after the stock of IP addresses
is audited by someone competetent, i.e. an accountant who
has audit training. This means that if you work in a network
group that has been flying under the radar for years,
managing IP addresses as some minor netops technical detail,
life is about to get interesting.

And don't bother sneering at those accountants and making
smart remarks about how little they understand networks.
They don't need to. They will want to see your records,
understand your recordkeeping procedures, and make sure that
you really do know how many IP addresses are in use, how
many are unavoidably wasted for technical reasons, and how
many are in limbo due to customer churn or network redesign.

In fact it would be useful if ARIN would produce some documentation
targeted at CPA auditors, that explains how to audit IPv4 addresses.

--Michael Dillon

Oh, by the way, the last time our finance audit committee audited
IP addresses, they produced a report with about a dozen recommendations
that had to be implemented, some of them requiring significant 
effort. So expect life to get very, very interesting for some people.