[arin-ppml] Set aside round deux

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Do you have any evidence that there are significant quantities of
> non-legacy address space available to be reclaimed at the end of
> an audit process? Even a basis for credible suspicion?

Even where there is credible suspicion, you need to balance it with
the organizations pending requests to ARIN for additional space. The
orgs which are most likely to be able to free up a large chunk of addresses
are also highly likely to come to ARIN within 3 months for a similar sized
chunk. All they have to do is get a court order to delay things for a
few months (childsplay for a beginning lawyer fresh out of law school)
and they can demonstrate technical justification to a judge, for keeping
those addresses.

In fact, most of the so-called wastage is not in big chunks, but in
little scattered chunks which can only be effectively used in the same
provider's network. If you force them to renumber in order to aggregate
chunks, then by the time that is done, months have passed and they have
a new technical justification for keeping the addresses.

There is no pot of gold out there. IPv4 exhaustion really does mean
that the set of numbers known as IPv4 addresses, really are mostly used
up. Any chunks that are in a questionable state are small and scattered,
and may actually be in use but just lost in play due to recordkeeping
issues. Having bad records is not a technical justification for taking
addresses away from an org.

> The next step would be for staff to institute voluntary or forced
> reclamation
> procedures as required under section 12 after the audit, if the
> organization
> is significantly out of compliance.

Big, big, big, IF.
Most orgs that are out of compliance are not significantly out of
compliance, and if they knew about it, they would get in compliance
by reusing addresses rather than asking for more.

> > If my experience working at orgs who have and continue to hoard /8s
> and
> > /16s is representative, the amount of recoverable address space using
> > this methodology would be upwards of 20% of all IPv4 addresses.

If releasing the hoard requires network redesign, then it would not take
much to convince a judge to delay any ARIN action until the org deploys
IPv6 given the major importance of the IPv6 transition. 

There really is not much that ARIN can do to change the way that IPv4
exhaustion impacts us. It is too late. About the only thing that would
help us through the IPv6 transition would be a massive educational 
program by ARIN, starting with sessions for New York stock market analysts
who ask CEOs the tough questions when they present their quarterly
results.

--Michael Dillon