[arin-ppml] IPv4 Transfer Policy Change to Keep Whois Accurate

[John Curran]

On May 13, 2011, at 10:23 AM, Chris Engel wrote:
> John,
> 
> Thanks for your explanation. The approaching run-out of IPv4 certainly brings alot of complications to the table for ARIN and I don't envy those charged with administrative or decision making duties in the coming months.

We'll do the best job possible to implement the policies as defined by the 
community.  This can get rather challenging at times, and does sometimes 
require ARIN to do some serious educational efforts to folks not aware of 
the Internet Registry system, but the effort is not insurmountable. 

> Sure but how do you determine genuine utilization from manufactured utilization. Does giving away a 3 or 6 month free subscription to a "digital paper-weight" with every happy-meal purchase count as utilization?  How about having another company which is a legally separate entity (but just so happened to have the exact same private ownership/board membership) purchase 80% of the virtual pet rocks for their "virtual pet rock garden" count as utilization?
> 
> Those sort of shenanigans may sound rather absurd now, because there would be a real cost to enacting them in a convincing manner. However IF the real value of an IPv4 address increases beyond the cost of such ploys, suddenly they become worthwhile doing. Would not the cost/difficulty of effectively differentiating between gaming and the real thing also increase for ARIN under such circumstances?

Shenanigans such as the above are attempted now, but are also stopped readily
easily when you start asking for various records and perform cross-checks.  I
am not saying it's foolproof, but the you need to fabricate a fairly complete
alternate reality and have the evidence standing by...  

> As I see it, as the rewards for gaming the rules increase, people will be willing to invest more resources in doing so. Unless you are willing to devote more resources to enforcing said rules, your effectiveness in enforcing them diminishes accordingly. 
> ...

> I think you are not going to end up without very much "bang for your buck".  Either you are going to end with a rubber stamp system which people with some knowledge of the system and resources to spend in gaming it will increasingly be able to subvert or you are going to end up having to increase your enforcement efforts (and the resources devoted to them) significantly in order to maintain a similar degree of effectiveness as you do today.

Again, we're seeing quite a bit of this now, and the motivations may be
stronger (i.e. right now, you can get an entire block "for free" if your
request is approved).  I do not believe that it is certain that the fraud 
attempts will necessarily be any greater than we deal with at present.

> It strikes me as a pretty unenviable position for ARIN. Perhaps the point David Farmer raised in his post about dropping the needs based justification for transfers below a certain size threshold (or perhaps annual quota for a single organization) and preserving it for ones that exceed it would be a good compromise position? After-all, small transfers would likely be approved on a trial basis anyway....and likely would do limited harm even if done without real justification.

The more straightforward the policies and the fewer constraints, the easier
to implement.  The implementation effort should be considered, but the most
important thing is for the community to set policies which match the common
goals to keep the Internet operational.  If this can be done with simpler
policies, that would be good, but the first priority is determining the goals
that enjoy overall community support.

> Anyway, the above assumes that the scarcity of IPv4 addresses results in a significant increase in the value of such addresses. Perhaps if IPv6 adoption see's more of an uptick.... that situation will be significantly mitigated and the impact of all this won't amount to very much. \

One can hope... :-)

> Thanks again, appreciate the ability to be able to participate in such discussions as just a member of the interested public. The openness and level of communication are refreshing.

Thanks for participating!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN