[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 2010-10 - Global Policy for IPv4 Allocations by the IANA Post Exhaustion

[Chris Grundemann]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 17:25, David Farmer <farmer at umn.edu> wrote:
>
> Chris, I can appreciate you position on this.  However, I can assure that a
> number of the authors of the previous global policy proposal thought that a
> mandatory requirement for return was equally important.

Understood - I see the return to and allocation from the IANA as two
distinct halves of this issue however.

> I believe the essential portion of this policy is for IANA to have the
> ability to allocate any address space that is returned to it, not just /8s.

Agreed.

> What address space an RIR returns, if any, or placing restrictions on what
> can be done with the space once it is allocated to an RIR is and should be a
> local policy concern.

I mostly agree with this statement, global policy should only affect
global issues. Where I think we differ is that in this particular case
I think that the no-transfer clause *is* a global issue, not a local
one. Allow me to attempt to explain why:

At it's simplest, there are two ways of looking at IPv4 exhaustion and
how to deal with the temporary IPv4 address scarcity it is causing:

1) An IPv4 address market will solve everything.
2) Stewardship and generosity will be required.

If you are in camp #1, then restricting any addresses from transfers
is obviously a bad idea. Beyond that though - this entire policy
(which you believe to be essential) is worthless. If paid transfers
are going to solve all the worlds IPv4 scarcity problems, then the
IANA will never need to worry about fragments - because they will
never have any to worry about (since everybody will just
sell/rent/whatever IPv4 to each other).

If, however, you are in camp #2, then you believe that we should find
ways to safeguard against any potential market abuses. Providing
alternative means to those who truly need and will use IPv4 addresses
to grow the Internet in meaningful ways. In this case, you likely want
to see at least some folks (continue to) return unneeded IPv4
addresses. Perhaps especially from the vast tracts of Legacy space,
which should be returned directly to the IANA.

If we are going to ask our fellow community members to forgo the
market and return addresses that they may well be able to sell, then
shouldn't we be able to assure them that those same addresses will not
be sold by the organization who receives them? Shouldn't they be
protected from profiteering if they are to do what we are telling them
is the right thing?

> I must admit that I would prefer that APNIC transfer policy was needs based,
> but that is and should be the APNIC community's choice.  Just as how ARIN
> should deal with address space returned to it should be the ARIN community's
> choice.

I do not believe that any (at least not many) in the APNIC community
wrote their policy to create any of the negatives I have alluded to
here. I do think that we should protect against those negatives if we
expect anyone to return space to the IANA. If we do not expect anyone
to return space - then we don't need a policy for IANA to hand out
that space at all.

> If we can focus on the essential functions of IANA and stay out of all local
> policy issues, I think we might have a policy that can be passed globally.

I hope we are close to such a policy.
~Chris

> --
> ===============================================
> David Farmer               Email:farmer at umn.edu
> Networking & Telecommunication Services
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@ChrisGrundemann
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www.burningwiththebush.com
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