[arin-ppml] 2009-1 comment

[Scott Leibrand]

Kevin Kargel wrote:
>
> So long as there is free space available in the general pool then the
> transfer applicants would be unaffected.  They would still be able to buy
> and sell their IP's Making the transfer pool available to the general pool
> would only come in to play post-runout.  What this would do is that post
> runout organizations that do not have big bucks in their budgets will still
> have a shot at the space.  
>
> If the only solution is to edge the small organizations out of competition
> then that is no solution at all.  I would rather see ARIN drop out and
> resource registration revert to government.  That is most likely what will
> happen anyway when the market problems start cropping up.  There would be
> much more red tape and rigamarole but it would be an even playing field.
>   

You seem to be focusing entirely on the demand for IPv4 addresses, and 
ignoring the effect of price on the post-runout supply.  If the supply 
of addresses freed up were somehow fixed (a certain number of addresses 
would be returned regardless), then the dynamics  you describe would 
result in that tradeoff.  However, the other side of it is this:

Consider an organization with a large assignment that they've been using 
for a number of years.  Over that time, it has been subnetted and 
allocated across their network in a manner that made sense at the time, 
but today would be considered inefficient.  The organization could 
renumber their internal infrastructure to consolidate their addresses 
into a smaller portion of their original assignment, and free up the 
rest.  However, doing so would require significant work, and therefore 
would not be justified if there is no benefit to the organization of 
returning the space.  On the other hand, if the organization can make an 
arrangement with someone who needs the space, and get paid to transfer 
it to them once it's freed up, then there could be a business case to 
justify releasing the space. 

> Perhaps it is time for ARIN to be more aggressive in reclaiming swamp space.
>   

Agreed.  We have recently passed a few policies to give ARIN authority 
to do so (such as 2007-17: Legacy Outreach and Partial Reclamation, 
2007-14: Resource Review Process).  In addition, ARIN staff has been 
reaching out to verify the POCs in the database, which will put us in a 
better position to identify and start reclaiming blocks assigned to 
organizations that no longer exist.  There's also Draft Policy 2008-7: 
Identify Invalid WHOIS POC's, which just went through last call, and it 
appears will be adopted shortly.

There's still quite a bit of hard work to be done in this space, 
though.  Additional suggestions are always welcome.

-Scott