[arin-ppml] Draft Policy 2011-1 - Inter-RIR Transfers - Shepherd's Inquiry

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 21, 2011, at 11:45 AM, William Herrin wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> I'm not sure I follow you here Bill. What I'm saying is I don't want ARIN
>> to transfer resources to a region where the RIR does not preserve a
>> needs-basis on subsequent transfers of the addresses. ARIN does
>> preserve that requirement as the policy is currently written and I assure
>> you I will remain opposed to and am opposed to the proposals that
>> seek to change that.
> 
> Hi Owen,
> 
> I don't think we can't expect to control what the registrant does in
> the future after we've released the resource to that region. When we
> transfer the resource, we cede control to that region. If we want to
> exclude a region because of the region's policies, the appropriate way
> to do that is with a global policy to the effect of:
> 
> "RIRs may at their discretion institute bilateral number resource
> transfer agreements permitting IPv4 address blocks no longer than /24
> to be transferred between regions."
> 
I'm not attempting to exert control over what the registrant does after
we release the resources. I'm attempting to ensure that resources don't
get released into regions with incompatible policies that eschew good
stewardship of said resources.

This isn't really a global policy matter and it would be virtually impossible
to get a global policy in this area. Global policies require the concurrence
of all 5 RIR communities. I think that a unilateral policy within the ARIN
region that specifies under what circumstances ARIN would or would not
be willing to transfer resources to another region is a fine way to implement
this. The other RIRs would, of course, have to implement something similar
if they wanted to transfer resources to/from ARIN on behalf of their
constituents.

> Not with vague language about compatible policies and needs basis.
> 

If you don't like the vagueness of the current language, propose more
specific language

Personally I think that the current language is about as specific as we can
get, conveys the community intent and allows ARIN staff the latitude to adapt
to changing situations while still preserving the general intent of the policy.

> I do think we can refuse transfers to entities whose prior behavior
> has depleted them of the resources they now wish to transfer from our
> region. This can be addressed under "meet both RIR's policies" by
> setting local policy which applies to registrants requesting addresses
> and transfers inside the ARIN region as well.
> 

I don't have a problem with that idea, but, that policy would have to be on the
books before I could consider it as a factor in adopting a policy that supports
inter-region transfers. Since there is currently no such policy in the NRPM
or even in any of the current proposals, that is not the case.

> 
>> On Jun 21, 2011, at 10:37 AM, William Herrin wrote:
>>>>> 2. The timing of this proposal is bad. Pushing this policy prior to
>>>>> the exhaustion of ARIN's free pool invites an out-region address grab.
>>>>> This draft policy belongs on next year's agenda when the only
>>>>> addresses left to move are registrant to registrant transfers.
>>>>> 
>>>> There is at least one region where this is already the case. As such,
>>>> the policy is timely now.
>>> 
>>> There's a region in which ARIN's free pool is exhausted? Which one?
>>> 
>> There is a region in which that region's free pool is exhausted.
> 
> I respect your opinion, but mine is that they made their bed and
> should lie in it until ARIN's free pool is also exhausted. That's what
> I'm saying.
> 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. They have roughly 1/2 of the
world population within their region and only 22% of the IPv4 address space.

Do you mean they should be somehow penalized because they didn't
catch on to the internet when it was first being developed in the US?

Do you mean that you believe there is some reason they should not have
any access to the nearly 6 /8s in the ARIN free pool due to some action
on the part of the APNIC community?

I'm just not sure what bed you are saying they have made.

I don't want to allow transfers into their region so long as the result is to
free the resources from rational RIR based policy including needs basis.
However, this proposal would preserve that protection, so, other than
the issue of APNIC abandoning needs basis, I'm sorry, but, I'm at a loss
as to the nature of the bed you speak of.

Owen