[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-156 Update 8.3 to allow inter-RIRtransfers

[Chris Engel]

> 
> All,
> 
> I think that Paul's point is a very important perspective worth vetting as it
> goes to the heart of the role of RIR as stewards of their own resources and
> how they relate to the global community.
> 
> Inter-RIR transfers are a means to ensure that available resources go where
> they are needed. The debate within ARIN community has been...we need
> the resources we have..or will very soon, so no sense sharing with those who
> need them now outside of the region.
> I believe that Paul's point is that this perspective is counterproductive to
> ARIN's interests in getting this community to move to IPv6.
> 
> I think the valuation of keeping or sharing addresses should encompass the
> broadest set of benefits and costs.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> bd

Unless I'm mistaken, ARIN's mission is to steward efficient allocation of number resources in this region....not to promote the use of one IP protocol over another. Moving to IPv6 certainly solves the limited address space headache that ARIN faces.  It comes with a whole slew of headaches for people in other aspects of the IT game....but that's outside the scope of this discussion list, which is about address allocation. Point is, I can see why alot of folks in ARIN are looking forward to IPv6, as it solves a particular problem that is ARIN's main area of focus. However, that doesn't mean that it should consider "astro-turfing" stewardship of IPv4 resources in order to spur IPv6 transitions. The vibe I've gotten from reading between the lines in some of the posts here is that policy that purposefully spurs IPv4 runout faster should be promoted in order to get IPv6 adopted more quickly. That is very wrong headed thinking, in my opinion.

As long as IPv4 remains useful to some portion of the community in this region then ARIN should do whatever is within it's prevue to efficiently steward those number resources, REGARDLESS of what that means to the speed of IPv6 adoption.

At the same time, ARIN should work to make sure that any barriers that exist in it's policies that would retard IPv6 allocation are minimized. Frankly, I think it's done pretty much that. The headaches that are retarding IPv6 adoption, don't have very much to do with the ability to get an address allocation. They pretty much all boil down to implementation issues.

On point, I'm not really sure that ARIN should be promoting transfer of address space out of this region, at all, if there is a clear case to be made (which I think is self-evident) that there will be a need for those resources in this region. The only legitimate argument I can see is that the allocations have already been made to organizations. If there isn't a legitimate mechanism for transferring them to who they want, will they just bypass ARIN and go ahead and do it anyway...and what are the implications of that?



Christopher Engel