[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-132: ISP Sub-assignments Do Not Require Specific Customer Relationships

[Jimmy Hess]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:48 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> Prop 132 seems reasonable to me. All I have heard against it are religious arguments. E.g., the statement below

Too much collateral damage here,  with regards to implicit
understanding of what an ISP "customer" is.
I am opposed to PP132.

Clearly the NRPM requires allocations from ISPs be to customers for
some good reasons--
there is a need for some  contractual arrangement between ISP and
address recipient.
Otherwise the recipient of IP addresses  might refuse to give
allocated addresses back
to the ISP,  when the user no longer has a justified need for the addresses.

If the ISP is not actually providing connectivity services,  then they
will not necessarily be informed
when services are being terminated or re-designed so fewer addresses
are actually required;
this creates problems for keeping allocation based on justified need,
and argues strongly
for requiring IP addressing to be used with actual ISP connectivity
services,  as we have
under current policy,    or at least requiring the ISP collect
paperwork on a regular basis to
constantly re-validate the continuous need for the allocation.


I oppose Prop 132 as unnecessary.     We  don't need a NRPM policy to
say a customer is
whatever the ISP defines a customer as.

The ISP's ability to define customer should be contingent upon the
ISP's  definition
of "customer" being reasonable.     If  ARIN is not allowed to reject
unreasonable
definitions,  of "customer";   the applications this would allow may
be hard to foresee.


An  "ISP"  whose business is to be a proxy providing service for
facilitating spammers
aka "people who want to be anonymous",  utilizing as many IP addresses
as possible to evade
RBLs,  or whose sole existence is to sell or "lease" IP addresses,
should probably not be allowed
to force their choice definition of customer,  if it  conflicts with
what the community sees an ISP customer as.

I can see it already...
"Applicant's Definition of customer:   an individual e-mail that has
subscribed  (or we have subscribed without permission)
to our e-mail marketing campaigns."


> * unless, of course, you want ARIN deciding which uses and users are more worthy.

It is beneficial that ARIN  to be prepared to exercise good judgement
if an ISP starts
making strange claims about what they define their customer to be,  or
what they define
their function as an ISP to be.

Such as...  "Every single user of the internet is declared to be my
customer,  therefore I
need 3 /8s from you, ARIN, ASAP, because there are more than  3 * 2^24
 internet users,
and  I need to have a host set aside for as many of my customers as possible,
so they will be  good to go on my proxy-server-for-hire  service."

There are some implied things about "customers"... such  as customers
are people who
buy services from ISPs,  have some form of contract with the ISP for
those services,
and pay  substantially large maintenance/service  fees  on a frequent basis,
and these are some implicit understandings of what a 'customer' is, I
view, when I read the NRPM,
but which are not recorded on paper.

Connectivity,  Transit, Hosting are some of the most common types of
service a customer
buys from an ISP  which requires IP addresses for use with the ISP's service.
There could be a few others,  but not many others really.


We do not need the NRPM to   _either_  enumerate all possible types of
customer  or   to
completely abdicate oversight of "what a customer is" entirely to the
ISP,   or what all the possible
services  that require IP addresses might be.


--
-JH