[arin-ppml] Can a personal property approach ever transition into multi-stakeholder, private sector led, bottom-up policy development model?

[William Herrin]

On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 10:15 PM, Mark Andrews <marka at isc.org> wrote:
> You had to demonstrate (attest) need for the address
> even back then.  From memory it was 1, 3 and 5 years projections
> and it was the 3 and 5 year projections that got me the class B.

No need to recall. Many of the old forms are right here:

http://bill.herrin.us/network/templates/


> The only thing different today is that the process is much more
> formalised.

If you really want to understand what's changed, go to the Crab Book:
O'Reilly & Associates TCP/IP
Network Administration. On selecting IP addresses, the 1993 edition
had this to say:

"Obtaining a network address from the NIC is simple and costs nothing.
There are no advantages to choosing your own unofficial network
address -- except that you do not have to fill out an application."

You asked for addresses. If you had a good reason, you got more than a
/24. If not, you got a /24. And that was it. Ownership or lack was not
contemplated. What did or didn't justify need was not contemplated.
Rules for transfer were not contemplated. The thinking around IP
addressing was simply not that sophisticated.

By 1997 when ARIN's creation was being planned, the thinking had
become a little more sophisticated. There was this idea that there
probably should be an ongoing back and forth responsibility between
the registrant and registrar.

At which point an informal Indian Treaty was made to smooth the path
for ARIN's existence. You can find reference to it in Randy Bush's
April '97 presentation to the FNCAC (Federal Networking Council
Advisory Committee). Page 9 of
http://rip.psg.com/~randy/970414.fncac.pdf

"Current and old allocations and their DNS will be maintained with no
policy changes."

So, shall we keep the now-inconvenient promise? Or find a reason why
we didn't really actually mean exactly that promise and march the
legacy registrants to their new reservation?


IMO, our ability to keep the promise speaks volumes about ARIN's
trustworthiness. And a failure to keep it would reflect a decline in
credibility.

And for what? So we can squeeze the legacy registrants a little bit
instead of waiting and letting the rise of IPv6 put an end to the
issue for us? Not worth it!

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
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