[arin-ppml] Against 2013-4

[John Curran]

On Jun 3, 2013, at 9:51 AM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

>> 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.
> 
> No, I challenge this on a factual basis. The main legacy holders from the mid-1980s - MIT, GE, the military, etc. - were not subject to needs assessments as we use that term today. 

Milton - 
 
  It is quite possible that the very earliest allocations were made without 
  respect to need (at least as we use the term "needs-assessment" today)
  One wonders whether saying to Jon, "I want an address block" versus
  "I need an address block" made a meaningful difference in the earliest 
  days, but that's quite likely unknowable.

  However, we know that DDN NIC (run by SRI) did require you to specify your
  need for address space to determine which size allocation to issue you and 
  this meant your anticipated need initially, and at one, two, and five years 
  out.   This information was required to be submitted with the network request 
  template, and we have copies of those back as early as 1990 which make the 
  requirement quite clear, and definitely in keeping with the term needs-
  assessment as it is in use today.

> If they were, you have to explain how MIT and a few others have ended up giving back large chunks, effectively admitting that they did not need them? If they did not need them, how did they get them? 

  Not only do needs change over time, but the deployment of CIDR in the early
  90's allowed organizations to far more effectively subdivide their existing 
  blocks and hence allow space to be returned.  It is quite likely that an 
  organization with many buildings and lans might be concerned about fitting 
  it all in a /16 (and hence requested a /8) would have found itself post-CIDR 
  able to fit in a /16 easily.

> This is probably not a very fruitful argument in that it is not forward-looking, but I do want to make it clear that claims that "we have always done it this way" are just false. 

  We actually don't know if saying "we have always done it this way" is 
  factually correct, since we do not know the rigour of the earliest 
  requests, but stating that its been done that way for the last two 
  decades is provably correct.

  (I have no view on the draft policy under discussion, and am providing
  this information solely for accuracy of the community discussion of same.)

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN