[arin-ppml] REQUEST FOR ARIN STAFF Was: Re: Policy Proposal 120: Protecting Number Resources

[Owen DeLong]

> 
>> Also, keep in mind that the goal is _not_ to reclaim a significant
>> amount of space, e.g. to extend the lifetime of IPv4, so how the
>> reclamation rate compares to the allocation/assignment rate is irrelevant.
> 
> I can't emphasize this enough.  Even if we could get back an entire /8's
> worth in the aggregate, which I think is extremely unlikely, it's a drop
> in the bucket compared to exhaustion.
> 
> But imagine how much spam could be sent, or malware distributed
> from a /16 of space someone was able to hijack because the original
> owner was no longer interested in it.  I think finding this space and
> taking away the big "hijack me" sign on it could be a real benefit to
> the network as a whole.
> 
And here's where you wander off in the weeds...

How does reclamation in any way improve this beyond what is
accomplished by marking records with invalid/unverifiable POC
data as such and leaving them?

Seems to me doing an actual reclamation requires significantly
more diligence (effort/staff time/expense) on ARIN's part and
yields no additional benefit in this area.

The only reason to bother reclaiming is if you intend to reissue.
Since there does seem to be consensus that reissuing is of little
value, is there any reason to allocate resources to reclamation
instead of merely marking invalid/unresponsive records?

> The most important thing to me though is that ARIN is actively taking
> care of the space.  Unfortunately one of the duties of a good steward is
> to clean up the mess when someone else just walks away.  I'd prefer
> folks return addresses when they are done with them rathter than leave
> them by the side of a road somewhere like a discarded pop can.  But if
> they do leave them by the side of the road ARIN should pick them up,
> dust them off and recycle them.
> 
There are lots of possible ways to take care. There's no physical
pollution here and reclamation while it sounds all neat and tidy
really doesn't accomplish much compared to its costs.

Owen