[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-172 Additional definition for NRPM Section 2 - Legacy Resources

[Robert E. Seastrom]

Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> writes:

> - Who am I to have such a selfish attitude.
>
> What can I say?
> A cranky old person who did my first networking code in the late 80's early 90's - though these days does mostly policy cruft.

How fascinating that we have a common background and yet have such
different experiences.

I, too, have number resources assigned to me (in my own name) that
predate ARIN's formation.  They are under LRSA.  The IPv4 prefixes are
also routed in the DFZ.

http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/RES-Z

> - Where did I get them
>
> Postel assigned them to me when I had a small contracting effort.  Used them for a number of years until my ISP was acquired and then found the new guys would not route them any longer.

I have to confess that as an upstream ISP I would be reluctant to
adjust my filters based on the whois entry for 198.175.150.0/24.  It
smells abandoned and camped out on (no admin contact, tech contact for
the org is unknown, and only an abuse contact listed).  The truth may
be different, but we're talking appearances here.  The solution of
course is to clean up the whois entries.

> - Why dont I use them
>
> I would like to.  I still have a small consulting effort and would
> love to be able to use these instead of being forced to do NAT. But
> NAT works, sort of, so I only get riled up about with I see coercive
> langauge.  This has, incidentally convinced me of the importance of
> NAT (including for IPv6 where you all have the complete control you
> are trying to achieve in IPv4).  Sooner or later someone is going to
> say you can't have the addresses you want becasue you did not follow
> some rule or other to the letter.  Better make sure you have NAT
> when that happens. But I digress.  If I could get them routed, I
> would use them.

Assuming this has been you personally all along, or Technicalities is
a (dba|llc|lp|corp|whatever) that's still in business and you control,
the ARIN registration services folks have a history of being very
reasonable about sorting out database stuff.  Depending on the
details, you may have to bring things under LRSA in order to
consummate the deal.

As near as I can tell, your "you can't have the addresses you want
becasue you did not follow some rule to the letter" concern is utterly
without historical factual basis.  Sure, people get turned down for
new allocations and assignments all the time for lack of documented
need, but that's not what we're talking about here.

If there's some kind of fraud or misappropriation involved (company's
out of biz but you hung onto the addresses, etc) then all bets are
off, but if there *were* fraud involved I'm sure you'd be far too
smart to bring attention to yourself by posting your gripes to PPML,
so that angle really doesn't bear much further discussion.

But ARIN really does bend over backwards to try to fix this sort of
situation.  ARIN staff has a mandate from the Community to take a very
active role, on multiple fronts, to make whois more accurate.  I have
observed firsthand as ARIN staff has gone above and beyond to untangle
registrations where people have "put stuff in the blanks because the
blanks were there" and similar such errors.

> - Why can't you get them Routed?
>
> My ISP won't route them becasue they are not propoerly assinged by ARIN. Or so they say.
> ARIN is going to take them away unless I sign over to ARIN.

You have an opportunity to codify your rights rather than speculating
upon them, and as a nice little side effect regain the ability to
route the space (getting your home or business broadband provider to
actually announce your netblock is a separate issue).  Sounds like a
no-brainer.

> This seems coercive to me, and I hate it when governments are coercive.
> I hate it even more when non governments, asserting their own power ,over me are coercive

I hate that I have to renew my license plates and otherwise keep
official records up to date lest I run afoul of some procedural issue
and not be able to do what I want, too.  Sometimes you've gotta engage
on society's playing field.  It's called Social Contract.  Ever read
Rousseau or Locke?

> - Why don't I trust ARIN
>
> I have been getting coercive sounding email telling me what i MUST do on this subject for many years.  
> I have never been able to get assistance on this, even during the days when I bothered to try.

Do you have ticket numbers from the help desk from the times you
bothered to try?  I'm sure it would be informative to see where things
went wrong.

I'm sorry that you perceived the email that said you MUST do certain
subjects to be coercive, but obviously there's a grain of truth to the
imperative, for to fail to reply results in situations like:

   OrgTechHandle: CKN23-ARIN
   OrgTechName:   No, Contact Known
   OrgTechPhone:  +1-800-555-1234
   OrgTechEmail:  nobody at example.com
   OrgTechRef:    http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/CKN23-ARIN

> There has never been a consideration of me as a stakeholder who
> might have something to say on how they treated an assignment I was
> given before they existed.

As a member of the same class of stakeholders as you (legacy number
resource holder, been in the business approaching a quarter century),
and having been involved intimately in ARIN's policy process as a
member of the ARIN Advisory Council for over 8 years, I have to say
that your perception is incorrect.

> I beleive in multistakeolder organizations, and I do not think ARIN acts like one.
>
> I also find it rather offensive that instead of dealing with the
> people and organizations that might be disagreeing with ARIN
> policies, you have decided to define them out of existence by
> spinning it as just a database issue.  For that reason I find
> ARIN-PROP-172 incredibly offensive and hope it is not approved by
> the pwoers that be.

I'm still forming my opinion on 172.  Bluster is a poor argument tactic.

> - Do I  really think I can win this
>
> Of course not.  ARIN is big and strong and I am just one small insignificant voice.  
> But that does not mean I am not going to try.
>
> I am just explaining why I have become a foe of an RIR sysytem that
> seems to be dictatorial and especially of ARIN as the RIR I need to
> deal with. I am also explaining why, within Internet goverance
> circles, I would not be able to defend the multistakeholder nature
> of ARIN and wonder.

My grandfather used to say that if you don't vote you
don't get to complain (a common sentiment; clearly he wasn't the first
to say it).  I'm *just* self-regarding enough to think that my work
for the past several years might have had some kind of salutary effect
on the policies we've worked on.  

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rush/freewill.html

-r