[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 102: Reduce and Simplify IPv4 Initial Allocations

[Seth Mattinen]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> Seth Mattinen wrote:
>>
>> Having recently has a glimpse into the world snowshoe I have a different
>> view. There is so much space being "rented" right now it's not even
>> funny. A huge amount of it sits around idle so it will "clean up". I can
>> get multiple /18's and up with a phone call and enough money. We don't
>> have to wait for runout, these guys will be ready and willing to sell
>> addresses to a brand new market when the time comes.
>>
> 
> If your right and the hoarders flood the market with IPv4 once the RIR's
> run out, then so be it - I guarantee that if what they do causes a
> problem, the ARIN community will shut it down.  That's the problem with 
> designing a business plan around hoarding - it's going to
> be tolerated only as long as you don't make a nuisance of yourself.

That's the fun thing I learned. They're borrowing space from people who 
have a surplus for a fee. Normally this surplus should be returned to 
ARIN especially since we're all panicky about IPv4 runout, right? Wrong.

This is a bit OT, but here's what I know. Mr. W needs some address space 
at his colo. He can't qualify via the colo's rules or ARIN's. Mr. X 
calls himself an IP broker. All he does is arrange people that have 
spare IP space with people who need some IP space for whatever reason. 
Let's say me the ISP has an /18 that's unused. Mr. X will give me $Y to 
borrow that /18 for Z amount of time. He will turn around and tell Mr. W 
that he can advertise that /18 at his colo for $Y+markup. One of my 
friends who does consulting somehow got involved with Mr. X and started 
to see dollar signs. It took me several weeks of being totally confused 
to get behind the curtain and tell everyone I wasn't interested in 
letting other people reannounce my space outside of my AS.

Wasn't there a policy to encourage return of resources? I don't 
remember. ARIN would have to find these orgs who are renting their space 
out to brokers and revoke it somehow to put a stop to it.


>>
>> If I had PA space (I don't) and that happened, I would just pass it on
>> to the customer as a fee.
> 
> which then triggers the scenario you originally described, the
> "screw this, if I have to renumber anyway, goodbye" which your
> trying to avoid, I thought.

Yes, but I'm between a rock and a hard place, as you said. Can't afford 
to absorb the fee, can't pass it on. I don't have an answer.



>>
>> Are there really any ISP's out there operating on a single /24 anymore?
>> (serious question) The days of small ISP's with a rack-o-modems in the
>> back room is long gone. No policy change we make will motivate anyone.
>>
> 
> I think there's WISP's operating out there with 2 or 3 /24's.

Then they probably already qualify as is unless they're single-homed. If 
they're multihomed and running on a lot of PA space due to lack of education


>>
>> We can't really do anything about pre-ARIN or existing agreements, so
>> it's best to forget about it and move on and up. But I don't believe
>> they are all planning on IPv6 in the near term. See my recent somewhat
>> public fight with Verizon re: exactly that. Maybe if someone could
>> convince the world to route IPv6 as fully as IPv4... but no, they're
>> trying to keep costs down, and *not* supporting IPv6 completely is part
>> of that goal.
>>
> 
> There is a famous old quote (which I can't find the source to right now)
> 
> "My enemies make their plans out of wire, I make my plans out of string, 
> because string is a lot more flexible than wire"
> 
> I suspect that a lot of them are making their IPv6 deployment plans
> out of string.
> 

Well, I've been IPv6 ready since 2005. It's still a horrible struggle to 
get upstream support though, which makes the quality suffer a bit more 
than IPv4, which means people aren't as interested, etc. all the way 
downhill.

~Seth