[arin-ppml] Fwd: ARIN-prop-165 Eliminate Needs-Based Justification

[Chris Engel]

As an end-user network which generally obtains it's space from transit providers,  I don't have much insight into the transfer process or direct assignments in general.  However,  I do have to wonder what the practical difference is between a transfer (whether needs based or not) and simply having an existing registrant act as a "figure-head" and farm out or sell access to some portion of their space instead?

For example, assuming a Legacy (or maybe even RSA) holder that had unused space, what would stop them from saying  "Hey, we have all this unused space that could provide us with a revenue source.  We don't want the hassle/overhead of acting as a real transit provider. We also don't want any potential roadblocks of an outside organization (ARIN) having to sign off on a sale of these IP resources..... so rather then sell the IP resources themselves (or I guess technically the registration of them) ...we just sell the right to use those resources. We'll reach an agreement with XYZ corporation....we'll still act as the "Name on the Door" as far as the Registration is concerned....but they assume all real operational control of this space...and in turn simply pay us for the right to use this portion of our registration".  Taking that a step further what's to stop an organization that didn't want to deal with the marketing and brokering of such deals to sell those access rights to a middle-man that would act as a broker for those resources, and depending upon the structure of the deal, couldn't a broker engaged in such practices effectively even act as a speculator?

Obviously that sort of deal is less attractive to a "buyer" since their access to the space they would be using is still dependent on the official Registrant. I also assume there may be some risk to the value of the Registrants own resources dependent upon the behavior of those they are "sub-letting" their space to. However I assume those risks would simply be reflected in the pricing of that sort of deal.

Assuming the above, my questions are...

1) In terms of ARIN's current practices, is there anything that would prevent such behavior?

2) If not, to what extent is such behavior already occurring?

3) What would be the difference in impact to the community from such behavior as opposed to a straight transfer?


I believe the answers to the above questions may be informative as to the practicality of continuation of a needs based transfer requirement in an environment of growing scarcity. Note, I'm not taking a stance philosophically one way or the other on Needs based requirements. However, I have some experience with trying to understand the operational impacts of policies. The question that I always consider when a policy is put in place to control some behavior is what emergent behavior is likely to result from said policy...what's the impact of that behavior....and what do/can you do about it?
 



Christopher Engel