[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-178 Regional Use of Resources

[John Curran]

On Jul 14, 2012, at 1:07 PM, Tony Hain wrote:

> Just a reminder that the address space is a global resource. ARIN is a
> regional administrator to - facilitate - distribution, just like the other
> 4. 
> ...
> Rewind the clock to ~'96 when IANA handled all distribution, and there was
> no 'this is mine' mentality.
> ...
> I still believe that the best course of action would be for the RIR holding
> the largest pool to take on the role of IANA and do a monthly/quarterly
> distribution through any RIR without the resources to meet its customer's
> needs.

Tony - 
 
  Just to be clear on some factual references:  In 1996, the distribution and
  management of number resources was predominantly handled by 3 organizations:
  RIPE NCC (for Europe), APNIC (for the Asia-Pacific Region), and by NSI for 
  the rest-of-world (under the InterNIC cooperative agreement with NSF)  Jon 
  Postel, as the IANA, was involved in an overall policy role but not in the  
  normal distribution process. This is all fairly well described in RFC 2050, 
  which was published in 1996.  

  In 1997, ARIN was established "to give the users of IP numbers ... a voice in 
  the policies by which they are managed and allocated within the North American  
  region." <http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102819>  The number-
  related tasks of the InterNIC program were transferred to ARIN at its formation, 
  and as a result the community in this region is indeed obligated to consider 
  which policies are most appropriate for managing resources in the region, 
  including the policies for assignments from the regional free pool.
  
  Regarding regional IPv4 availability pool management, I actually would have
  expected that these would be reduced as we approached run-out, and that each
  RIR would adopt smaller assignment windows and receive smaller regional IPv4
  replenishments from the central IPv4 pool, with the net effect being a phasing
  out of the regional inventories as we neared the end.  This would have resulted
  in an regional depletion which was more aligned and thus a concurrent global
  overall runout of IPv4.  However, this was not to be, and there was strong
  support by the community in each region for instead allocating the final 5 
  /8 IPv4 blocks from the free pool to each RIR regardless of its regional 
  inventory.  Your call in 2007 for a "cooperative distribution policy" also 
  did not gain traction <https://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2007_27.html>; 
  it appears that it could have resulted in APNIC in turn issuing out of the 
  regional IPv4 pools of ARIN, LACNIC, and AFRINIC (as each became the weekly 
  source RIR) and also minimized the differences in regional inventories.

  As it is, we have ended up in a situation where there are dissimilar sized 
  regional IPv4 inventories, and this has the potential for undesirable side-
  effects (such as attempts at "RIR shopping").  It is reasonable for the 
  community in the ARIN region to consider this is as a policy matter, taking
  both the potential equity issues that arise as well as the transient nature 
  of the problem into consideration.  (As an aside, I'll also note this type
  of discussion may also be important in other regions, where the combination 
  of relatively large local inventories and the prior runout in the APNIC,
  RIPE NCC, and ARIN regions will create some very interesting dynamics.)

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN