[arin-ppml] [arin-announce] [Fwd: ARIN-prop-133: No Volunteer Services on Behalf of Unaffiliated Address Blocks]

[George Herbert]

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm at ipinc.net> wrote:
> On 2/15/2011 10:21 PM, Eric Westbrook wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 22:36, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu
>> <mailto:mueller at syr.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>     > If the effort is to entice legacy space holders into joining
>>    ARIN, don't
>>     > try to penalize them.  Give them a positive incentive.
>>
>>    I don't see this proposal as involving any penalties. Indeed, it is
>>    the absence of this kind of thinking that consistently leads to
>>    proposals to force legacy holders into the ARIN regime. The
>>    (implied) incentive in 133 is that legacy holders can go to other
>>    service providers - assuming of course, that we retain a consistent
>>    and integrated whois that works across multiple service providers.
>>
>>
>> Nothing's broken today with respect to the services in question.  I can
>> only envision additional costs, rigmarole, and coordination issues to
>> come with a multiple-provider regime.
>>
>> Perhaps what's broken is that legacy holders like me don't pay -- at
>> least, that seems to be the source of some significant outrage here.
>
> Not to me, and it's never really been that much.
>
> What I really resent most of all are the legacy-assigned blocks that
> are NOT in use.
>
> I don't care if you were assigned a legacy block 15 years ago that your
> paying nothing for - and you have 60% or more utilized.  If anything,
> you have my support to have at it.
>
> But I do very much care if you have a legacy block that you got 15
> years ago that is at 1% utilization because your too fat, dumb, and lazy
> to renumber into a /24 within that block and return the rest to
> the RIR.


I oppose this policy proposal.

More generally - the number of "large enough to matter" blocks which
may be truly badly utilized and therefore highly attractive to
encourage legacy holders to renumber and vacate isn't that big in the
great scheme of things.  It will not save "the end of the world" (IPv6
transition imminence) from happening, given that if they haven't
already started, a renumbering effort for a large enterprise will take
months to low years to fully develop and implement.  I doubt that we
could free up IPv4 space at the rate that APNIC needs more.

IF this were to be successful, the time to do it was 2-4 years ago.
That would at least have allowed time to A) negotiate with those
amenable to it in good faith and of charitable intent, B) litigate
with those who would, C) allow user network teams time to make changes
and give back the addresses.

Given the policy / political / legal uncertainty of what the ultimate
outcome will be of answering the question:  "for values of 'own' that
include financial compensation for use of them, who 'owns' legacy IP
space?" ...

The only part of this that makes sense now is to ask
large-enough-to-matter legacy holders what their usage is and to ask
them to renumber if the answer is low and the effort reasonable, in
the name of the common good.  There's no downside to asking for that.
Trying to force the issue seems like unnecessary and unproductive
strife.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com