[arin-ppml] Transfers by non-legacy address holders and perceived risk of reclamation

[William Herrin]

On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 2:06 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> On Sep 1, 2011, at 1:38 PM, William Herrin wrote:
>> If we want ARIN to enforce efficient utilization then that includes
>> audits and revocation.
>
>  At no time in the history of the Internet number registry system has
>  there been an aggressive attempt to account for utilization of all of
>  the addresses that have been issued.

John,

At no time in the history of the Internet number registry system have
we had 0 addresses available to issue. The process evolves with the
conditions it encounters.


>  You've asserted a binary end-state where ARIN is either "to enforce
>  efficient utilization" or is to disregard utilization it altogether,
>  and this does not reflect reality of any point in history of the
>  Internet number registry system.

Respectfully, that is not a correct analysis. ARIN and its
predecessors have been charged with enforcing efficient utilization
from the inception. The definition of "enforcing efficient
utilization" has been a moving target to be sure, but since ARIN's
inception it has been continuously charged with the then-extant
version of enforcing efficient utilization.

But don't take my word for it.

NRPM 4.2.2 "Organizations [...] must satisfy the following
requirements: [...] Demonstrate efficient use of IP address space
allocations"

NRPM 4.2.4.1 "ISPs must have efficiently utilized all previous allocations"

etc. etc. The phrase "efficient utilization" appears in the NRPM a
full dozen times. Synonymous phrases appear more.

This will continue evolving to meet IPv4 scarcity conditions. Or it
will be replaced with something else. A binary condition.

If enforcement continues, scarcity requires some combination of
voluntary (via transfer) and involuntary (via revocation) loss of
underutilized IPv4 addresses. The writing is on the wall; that's where
the enforcement path leads next.

If as a community we elect to back down from the version of enforcing
efficient utilization that circumstances evolve to require then *in my
opinion* we should make a clean break. Half-assed enforcement is worse
than no enforcement. It can't help but create situations that are
blatantly and fundamentally unfair, undermining the foundation of
trust on which the whole system is built.

A clean break means that ARIN effectively becomes a recorder of deeds,
reporting to the public about who currently owns the eyesore across
the street. That path also has a clear destination: IF we elect to
treat IP addresses as property in everything except name than we ought
to treat them that way in name too.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
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