[arin-ppml] Current policy/process on transfers between RIR's

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Can someone confirm if resources are being transferred 
> between RIR's today as part of corporate 
> acquisition/divestitures?  If so, under what policy?  Can 
> someone site examples of this being done?  I'm curious as to 
> how the records are managed.

My employer has a global network with all of its addresses sourced from
ARIN. There is a 5 to 7 year transition plan to move all the customers
onto another global network with all of its addresses sourced from RIPE.
The two networks both touch roughly the same cities and until this
quarter, both were growing including adding new PoPs. Now one network is
removing PoPs in fringe areas where the other strategic network has
recently added PoPs. 

We will eventually accomplish the transfer of all customers without
involving the RIRs at all. It's enough work to deal with all the
technical differences between networks, add features to the strategic
network, install various gateways to support transition, and then slowly
start moving customers sometime next year once the new features are
well-tested.

We all must put up with a small amount of RIR bureaucracy in order to
get addresses registered, but it would be wrong to require anyone to
include the RIR bureaucracy in the delicate brain surgery of network
transitions.

I pray that there are no masochists out there who have actually
transferred resources between RIRs, outside of the legacy stuff which
halfway made sense.

--Michael Dillon

P.S. My employer has some other global networks as well with addresses
sourced from ARIN, RIPE, LACNIC and APNIC. I hope we never have to sort
out that situation, just let the IPv6 transition ease us slowly away
from the legacy of acquisitions. Word on the grapevine has it that all
of our major competitors have IPv6 pilot projects underway, some with
customers connected, so there is a good chance that the IPv6 transition
will happen and give everyone the opportunity to sweep aside lots of
legacy cruft from the Internet frontier days.