[arin-ppml] Draft Policy 2012-3: ASN Transfers

[Jimmy Hess]

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 5:29 PM, Martin Hannigan <hannigan at gmail.com> wrote:
> This proposal would remove what is currently an ambiguity, provide a
> useful policy to those who do want to transfer an ASN for a multitude
> of legitimate reasons and to help improve the accuracy of our
> documentation.

What are these multitude of legitimate reasons that an ASN transfer
would be required
outside of M&A instead of applying for and receiving a new ASN?

Even in the case of M&A the need for AS transfer in the absence of a
continued unique routing policy is unclear.    Renumbering into a
different AS is a  highly inexpensive operation  (compared to
renumbering into a new IP address space).

With AS transfers between different organizations allowed,  there is
an increased risk of an accidental situation where  two different
organizations are simultaneously using the same AS to announce
prefixes, even though they are not supposed to,  because the losing
organization made an oversight in the "AS deconfiguration process";
and such simultaneous use of the same AS is very bad,  and much less
likely to be properly detected than accidental simultaneous use of an
IP prefix.



To be clear, some example of things I would define as not legitimate:

* An organization disposing of AS numbers through specified transfer
to hide or "change" their apparent identity,  for example, their
previous AS may have been  depeered, and become known as a spammer AS;
 it could be convenient for them to dispose of that AS, and apply for
a new one later.

* Deriving unfair value out of "special" ASN numbers,  for example
selling  "AS number 1",  "AS number 123", "456",  or "AS number 666"
for a large sum of money via specified transfer,  because ARIN
happened to allocate a number that some buyer considers to have some
vanity significance.    Any value of this significance really belongs
to the community,  who did not issue these numbers with the
expectation they could be transferred or sold.

* Trading 16-bit numbers as a means of discouraging use of  "less
valuable" 32-bit AS numbers.

* An organization that does not actually need multiple AS numbers
acquiring multiple AS numbers.

* An organization acquiring large numbers of  AS numbers for the
purpose of reselling and transferring them later,  an "AS broker".


---
-JH