[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-131: Section 5.0 Legacy Addresses - revised ver. 3

[Benson Schliesser]

On Feb 16, 2011, at 6:08 PM, John Curran wrote:

> To be clear: last year there was a prolonged discussion regarding a global
> policy for redistribution of returned IPv4 address.  In the ARIN region,
> the original text was changed to make return of address space optional,
> with two reasons cited:
> 
> 1) Mandatory return of IPv4 address space is not appropriate if the
>   resources are then being reallocated to RIRs that don't follow 
>   the goals of RFC 2050.
> 
> 2) ARIN has to absorb the costs involved in recovery of address space,
>   and therefore should not have to automatically return the space to
>   the global free (despite this being the historical ARIN practice)
> 
> So, we never set terms under which ARIN *must* return address space, but 
> did adopt a global policy in this region whereby ARIN could return space.
> 
> I do not know how this impacts the discussion of the policy, but felt it
> important that there be clarity on the last year's efforts.

Thanks for this commentary, John.  I do think it impacts discussion of prop 131.

I think it is our responsibility to avoid ambiguity in policy regarding fundamental management issues, such as how we will handle the free pool, transfers, and return of resources.  As such, I support the intent of prop 131.

However, I would like to see additional policy language added to prop 131, including (a) the definition of who ARIN will accept returned blocks from i.e. only legitimate address holders in the ARIN region, (b) the similar application of policy to non-legacy blocks, and (c) the allowance of inter-region transfer if explicitly called for elsewhere by the NRPM.

Cheers,
-Benson