[arin-ppml] An article of interest to the community....

[John Curran]

On Aug 31, 2011, at 12:40 AM, Matthew Kaufman wrote:

> I'm aware that incoming transfer requests are exempt from the scrutiny, but there has certainly been discussion here (and elsewhere) in the past to the effect of "I saw someone trying to sell address block <X> and so clearly they're not using it and so I've reported this as an underutilized block."
> 
> Whether or not that has or would cause ARIN to act on such a report, I can't know (except for your statement below)

If the resources under an LRSA, then it's a non-issue.

> One could imagine that if a block is listed for sale today and stays listed for many months, it probably isn't being utilized that well, absent a good story about how when the sale goes through they'll use the funds to actually renumber out of it.

Alas, we're likely unable to do anything about that, as the
LRSA provides protection against reclamation for lack of use.
In theory, if it was resources under RSA then it would be 
possible (but one would want to avoid that at all costs as 
long as there is a valid contact and good faith efforts)  
That does raise the question of why (and to what end) we are
more flexible with LRSA holders than RSA holders, but I'll 
defer that discussion to the ARIN Philly meeting...

> So it sounds from this like right now, a report like I mentioned above would not result in reclamation, as presumably the contacts would be reachable at the very least (hard to sell something if nobody can contact the seller)
> 
> But will the definition of underutilized change as ARIN's free pool dries up? Some in the community have certainly called for that.

I believe that the community needs to consider carefully the
merits of reclamation of underutilized resources from otherwise
valid address holders, particularly given the tangible value 
that such resources have in the presence of a transfer market.

I expect there will be an opportunity to discuss these matters
in the upcoming ARIN meeting.

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN