[arin-ppml] Draft Policy 2010-10 (Global Proposal):GlobalPolicy for IPv4 Allocations by the IANA Post Exhaustion- Last Call (textrevised)

[John Curran]

On Nov 2, 2010, at 11:30 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> Right now, Legacy netblocks that are attached to POCs that ARIN
> determines are non-respondent, can ultimately be freed up.  All ARIN
> has to do is determine a POC is abandoned and when ALL POCs that
> are on a particular Legacy block change to abandoned status, then
> the resource is, (in my opinion) effectively freed, and (in my opinion)
> ARIN should move it back into the free pool of assignable IPv4
> 
> I would hope that ARIN would just do this by themselves, but maybe
> we need yet another policy to state the obvious.
> 
> But that does not answer the Legacy space that is unused, yet still
> has a respondent POC on it.  Or Legacy space that the master block
> has an abandoned POC but has active POC's that are in SWIPS that
> were filed on parts of it.

Ted - 
 
I'd like to raise the abstraction layer just a bit, in order to show why the issue of Legacy space holders is not quite as obvious as one might hope...

On one hand, it seems fairly clear: ARIN administers a database for the community accordingly to openly developed policies, and this database includes information about legacy address assignments which ARIN agreed to administer as the final successor registry after a long line of contractors managing this information per US Government cooperative agreements.  Before this time, legacy address space holders had nominal say in policies surrounding the direct management of the database, other than at global level through overall IETF guidance documents, such as RFC 2050.  The transition to a community-based organization provides a more direct route for participation in the governance and policy development, and everyone wins (run applause track here...)

However, it is also the case that there is a significant base of legacy space holders who simply want to make use of the number resources, and have no particular interest in number resource policy, ARIN's governance structure, or fee schedules, etc.  These legacy holders have use of unique number resources, and simply wish that to continue unmolested.  When ARIN came into operation, things seemed just fine for those legacy organizations, and the fact that many of the ISPs at that time joined ARIN, paid fees, and participated in its formation does not mean that every legacy organization wanted to do the same.

One can readily argue that services to legacy address space holders should be provided services without any change, in the same manner as they were at ARIN's inception, since that matches some expectations in the community.  One can also argue that legacy address space holders should all participate in ARIN, sign agreements like everyone else, pay reasonable fees to offset their operational costs, and conform to the policies that are adopted by the community.

In the end, the active ARIN community needs to treat the legacy address space community with respect, and legacy address space holders need to also respect the more active ARIN community. The Legacy RSA and Specified Transfer policy are examples of where common ground was found, and we need more of that going forward rather than calls for "exertion of authority".  There is no doubt that ARIN will administer the Whois database accordingly to the community developed policy, but folks should keep in mind that there are tens of thousands of legacy address holders who may not be active in ARIN but still deserve to be treated fairly.

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN