[arin-ppml] SWIPs & IPv6

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

William Herrin wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Chris Engel <cengel at sponsordirect.com> wrote:
>> I mean ARIN's core mission is not the police the internet
>> and make sure no-one setup an open relay right?
> 
> Chris,
> 
> No more than ARIN's core missing is to set Internet routing policy.
> 
> Facilitating communication between end-user networks is not number
> resource policy. I have no particular objection to expanding ARIN's
> core mission to include it. I'd probably even vote for doing so. But
> until then I think discussion of SWIP policy predicated on factors
> other than resource justification is out of order.
> 

William,

   ARIN's mission IS ALSO to guarantee uniqueness of the allocated
resources.  There is no way to justify to an applicant that the
space they are getting is globally unique unless a PUBLIC database
is available that lists all assigned IP number resources.  That's
what the WHOIS database is.  Nobody would continue to pay money to
ARIN unless they had proof that that uniqueness is being maintained in
a manner that they can use to settle disputes between another entity
that is claiming their resources.

   If you obtain IP numbering from ARIN and ARIN does not publically
list the database, I can come to your upstream and claim that the
numbers ARIN assigned to you actually belong to me, and that your
squatting on them.  If the WHOIS database is either private, or
widely acknowledged by everyone to be stuffed full of bogus data,
then your upstream cannot go to it and verify that your telling the
truth and I'm a lying sack of monkey dung.

   So I do not see how you can make this claim that facilitating
communication between registrants is not a number resource policy.
Clearly, it is integral to maintaining a trusted registry.  And
as for facilitating communication between END-USER networks, well
the exact same issue applies on disputes between end-user networks
fighting over each other's numbering.

   Ultimately it's paramount that the RIR is seen as a completely
unbiased, and impartial entity.  Public disclosure is therefore
called for.  If ARIN says that Wonkulating Gronkulators has supplied
justification allowing it to obtain an IPv4 /8, then why should the
rest of us believe this is true unless we can go to the list of
IP addresses and see for ourselves that Wonkulating does indeed
have the requisite utilization.  The same issues exist for IPv6
as well, it's just that the large orgs that make multiple IPv6
netblock requests will be much fewer than under IPv4.  But your
still going to have people trying to make trouble for each
other in an IPv6 world by making bogus claims over each other's
numbering, so the RIRs are going to continue to have to be viewed
as an unbiased "last word" in who has what, and that will only
be possible with a verifiable public whois.



Ted