[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2013-4: RIR Principles - revised

[Owen DeLong]

On Jul 11, 2013, at 16:58 , David Farmer <farmer at umn.edu> wrote:

> I really don't understand this debate on Conservation. :{
> 
> There are some that seem to be claim that conservation is irrelevant with IPv4 free pool run-out.
> 
> I say so what!  We still have IPv6 and ASNs to worry about, and while both resource pools are GARGANTUAN by comparison, they are not infinite.  Therefore some concept of conservation remains necessary, obviously not the same concept that we have had in IPv4 for the last 20 years or so.  But, completely eliminating conservation as a concept, principle, or goal, of how we manage Internet number resources, seems like the proverbial "throwing the baby out with the bath water."
> 
+1

> Then others are not willing to concede that anything changes with IPv4 run-out.
> 
> I'll can say I really hope something changes, the focus on conservation that became necessary in the late '90s for IPv4, has nearly lead to the abandonment of other principles like the end-to-end model, open availability of resources (anyone building a network should be able to get unique addresses), etc...

I disagree.

The scarcity of IPv4 addresses, not the focus on conservation is what lead to the abandonment of end-to-end and the open availability of resources. The principles were not abandoned so much as forced up against a wall where they could not be sustained. This will not change with free-pool runout. It cannot change. It can only get worse.

> So how do we move forward? I suggest;
> 
> 1. Can everyone concede that going forward, conservation is much less important, but that the need for some concept of conservation doesn't completely go away either.

No. I think conservation as a core principle as described by Chris G. remains vital and must be retained.

>   0.2 Fair Distribution
> 
>   The principle of Fair Distribution is the precept that the
>   fundamental purpose of Internet number resources management is to
>   distributed unique number resources in a fair and impartial manner
>   to entities building and operating networks, for benefit of all
>   Internet users equally, and thereby facilitating the growth and
>   sustainability of the Internet.
> 
> I'd make this #2 behind Registration, and I'd suggest Conservation could follow and ties into this principle through the concepts of "fairness" and "sustainability"

If you are going to do that, then a sentence should be added at the beginning indicating that the order in which the principle are stated is arbitrary and not intended to convey their relative importance. Indeed, the relative importance of those principles and the need to balance them shifts with context to some extent and with time to a much larger extent. The balancing of the relative importance of these principles is one of the primary purposes of the PDP IMHO.

Owen