[arin-ppml] Call for a study & survey to obtain necessary information for policy development

[William Herrin]

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 7:51 AM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
>   contains a specific call for ARIN to charter a study including
>   a survey in order to obtain additional information to assist in
>   policy development.
>
>   I've not seen any discussion of this suggestion; would it be
>   possible to get feedback from the otherwise shy participants
>   on the PPML mailing list?
>
> On Apr 29, 2011, at 5:46 PM, Jeffrey Lyon wrote:
>> what we should do is
>> charter ARIN to conduct a comprehensive study and:
>>
>> - Conduct a survey of the public at large, PPML users, full members,
>> resource holders, and the AC to gain a clear understanding of
>> sentiment for or against an open market.
>> - Determine how many companies actually have IPv6 migration plans and
>> ascertain road blocks, either legitimate or financial, that are
>> preventing migration.
>> - Would resource holders support a model that allowed ARIN to take a
>> small commission on resource sales and then discontinue the practice
>> of charging an annual fee to its members who are not buying and
>> selling resources.

These seem like they could be determined by survey.


>> - In the survey, ask IPv4 resource holders to anonymously disclose
>> their true utilization rates and determine if companies are hoarding
>> resources either in hopes of future resale or to cover an arbitrary
>> future need.
>> - Determine the amount of participants that would come forward if told
>> they could resell their space on the open market and ultimately
>> determine how much unneeded space is being locked away in loosely
>> justified allocations.
>> - Determine if resource holders would be encouraged to tighten up
>> internal policies and free up more space if there were a fair market
>> value assigned to their space.

These strike me as very difficult to determine by anything approaching
a statistically valid survey. I would want to see a detailed
methodology proposed before agreeing either that money should be spent
conducting the survey or that the results would have merit to
contribute to the policy debate.


>> - Determine the economic impact. Would resource holders be better off
>> selling their resources to more affluent companies who would be able
>> to put the space to better use? Might there be a host of struggling
>> small businesses who would like to put their /17 - /21 on the balance
>> sheet? Are there companies that would purchase IPv4 space at a premium
>> if allowed to do so?

This would require a cost analysis of a great many factors, only some
of which have been touched on in the listed survey. Given the abject
lack of use of cost analysis in the Internet industry, it would
require at least three independent cost analyses and considerable
subsequent debate on and validation of the methodologies...

Start here: http://www.sceaonline.net/

Disclaimer: my father is a crotchety old cost analyst so I get a
regular earful about this stuff.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
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