[arin-ppml] Against 2013-4

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 3, 2013, at 8:50 AM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

> I would have to oppose most of the statements in this proposed revision of the RIR principles. 
> While it is a good idea to update a document written literally a generation ago for a different IPv4 world, it seems obvious to me that a lot of the thinking that went into this 2013-4 is an attempt to rigidify obsolete thinking rather than to update things. This is a backwards-looking revision that has little support in the real world. 

Milton,

The fact that you do not like needs-basis does not mean that it is obsolete thinking.

Quite recently, we have seen repeated demonstrations of strong support for needs basis from the community.
As such, I think it is inappropriate to characterize it as "obsolete thinking".

>> Policies for managing Internet number resources must support fair
>> distribution of globally unique Internet address space according to the
>> operational needs of the end-users and Internet Service Providers
> 
> Again, "fairness" and "operational need" are distinct concepts. Operational need may justify giving all the available resources to a large provider, which some may find unfair. This statement is essentially meaningless in that it introduces to potentially conflicting standards. 
> 

Yes, but policy must balance those concepts where they conflict in order to be effective. This statement may not be the best possible way to express that, but it is a valid expression of that concept.

>> 0.1.1. Documented Justified Need (Needs Based)
> 
> This section attempts to codify and make permanent a set of policies that were developed in the final death throes of IPv4. What a waste of time. 
> The idea of authorizing intrusive "accounting of resources" is precisely the opposite of the way we need to be going, both in IPv4 and IPv6. We should let the market allocate transfers of the fully-allocated IPv4 numbers, and current policies, which give organizations blocks based on the number of networks they claim and some fill ratio, for IPv6. There should  be flexibility in the methods of conservation used. There is no need to specify concrete methods and practices in a principles document. That is just a mistake. 

Nothing in the NRPM is inherently permanent, so this argument is questionable at best.

Needs basis and documented justified need have been required since the days when Jon Postel tracked IP address assignments in a notebook, so I am not sure how you can claim that this concept was developed in the final death throes of IPv4.

I'm well aware of your desire to move to a world where IP number resources management is as dysfunctional as radio spectrum management is today. (One need look no further than the history of the 220Mhz band for an example of this dysfunction).

The IPv6 portion of your argument is in favor of policies which require documented justified need, so you appear to be arguing against yourself here.

>> 0.2. Hierarchical aggregation (Routability)
> 
> I agree with the comments Bill Herrin made about this earlier. " Policies for managing Internet number resources must facilitate scalable routing." Scalability is what we care about, not necessarily hierarchical aggregation or anything more specific. Remember, these are supposed to be long-lasting principles, not a codification of what we are doing now, and not a specific set of policies. Let the community set the specific policies flexibly going forward.
> 
> Also agree with Bill that we should have an explicit principle that "ARIN does not set Internet Routing Policy"
> 
>> 0.4. Stewardship
>> 
>> It should be noted that efficient utilization and hierarchical
>> aggregation are often conflicting goals. All the above goals may
>> sometimes be in conflict with the interests of individual end-users or
>> Internet Service Providers. Care must be taken to ensure balance with
>> these conflicting goals given the resource availability, relative size
>> of the resource, and number resource specific technical dynamics, for
>> each type of number resource. For example, efficient utilization becomes
>> a more prominent issue than aggregation as the IPv4 free pool depletes
>> and IPv4 resource availability in any transfer market decreases.
>> Conversely, because the IPv6 number space is orders of magnitude larger
>> than the IPv4 number space, the scale tips away from efficient
>> utilization towards hierarchical aggregation for IPv6 number resources.
> 
> This section is also inappropriate for a principles document. It purports to tell the current community, as well as all future deliberations for the next 20-odd years, how to make policy tradeoffs. That is the kind of thing that should be left to the community itself. 

Since this is a document being developed by the community and which will require the consensus of the community to be enacted, I'm not sure how you can claim that it is not being left to the community itself.

Owen