[arin-ppml] ARIN-2013-4: RIR Principles / Request for General Thoughts

[Tony Hain]

Chris,

It is not my intent to criticize your effort here, because I agree with the
overall goal of establishing operating principles. That said, as with any
survey, the selection of questions, and the tone can/will greatly influence
the outcome. In that light, I would submit that this list of questions and
wording is buried in IPv4-think, and historical assumptions that may not
hold going forward.

1) "efficient utilization" assumes the addresses actually get to a place
where they can be used, while "need" assumes the addresses sit on the shelf
until someone proves they can't do without them. Addresses sitting on the
shelf at IANA when someone eventually comes up for a replacement for IPv6
will not have been "efficiently utilized", because they were never deployed
where they could be utilized. In particular, I am concerned that overly
aggressive IPv4-think conservation will stifle innovation in the home/SMB
routing arena. Definition of "need" by professional routing engineers will
guarantee that home/SMB networks will "need professional routing engineers",
because they will always be more "efficient" than any automated approach
(else they should be replaced by the automation). If "need" is limited to
the most "efficient" deployment a professional routing engineer can do, vast
layer-2 multi-media bridging is the future of home/SMB networking.

2) "Routability" as "hierarchical aggregation" is current technology, but
"Routability" is not inherently limited by past practice. I certainly
support the concept of allocations within the context of "Routability by
technology of the day", but would not want to see innovation hamstrung by
policies that are looking backwards and limiting the future to what has
been. Whatever policies get created under this context, there needs to be a
path for alternative deployment models to emerge.

3) "support the principle of uniqueness (Registration)" is an interesting
concept in a world where the vast majority of the IPv4 addresses in use by
end systems are not "unique" on a global basis, but many are "registered"
within the context of each enterprise network. In general, the context of
term use is very important, but not captured by this question. Most notably
this question seems to preclude use of the IPv6 address block FD00::/8,
which was set aside as an explicitly unregistered block (at the same time
there are still people that want to prevent standardization of FC00::/8
which would be registered, and almost zero support from the potential
registries, but I digress). Bottom line, this question appears to be about a
subset of what will really be deployed, but is worded as a catch-all that
will be selectively enforced whenever it is convenient for the enforcer. As
a matter of principle, it is bad practice to create policies that are
selectively enforced.

4) From merriam-webster.com - stewardship : the duty or function of watching
or guarding for the sake of proper direction or control 
"support the goal of balancing these principles with each other", is fine as
far as it goes, but some necessary detail is lost is the ambiguous and
incomplete state of the first 3 as asked. "under the overarching principle
of Stewardship" appears to be asking 2 questions at once; "is balance the
goal", & "are these items the entire list of control points". If balance is
the goal, what is the relationship between "registration" and "efficient
utilization"? How does that get measured? What happens if someone identifies
another control point? 

At the end of the day, I don't believe there are many that would argue
against the concept of "Stewardship" as it applies to a public resource. On
the other hand, almost everyone will argue about what constitutes "need",
and how that definition gets biased to favor their view of the world. Once
"need" gets defined, the majority will want to see that enforced as a
barrier to entry for technologies that will disrupt their comfort zone, and
source of compensation. 

Again, I support the overall goal of establishing operating principles. The
trick is going to be finding the path to those that is not so focused on the
past that it precludes evolution and innovation. While the survey is a great
starting point, it might make more sense to have Arin hire a professional
survey developer to create the questions for an "unbiased about the outcome"
manner as possible.  

Tony


> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On
> Behalf Of Chris Grundemann
> Sent: Friday, June 07, 2013 7:17 AM
> To: arin-ppml at arin.net
> Subject: [arin-ppml] ARIN-2013-4: RIR Principles / Request for General
> Thoughts
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> As the shepherd for ARIN-2013-4, I'd like to note that while the initial
> conversation on this draft policy was fairly constructive, more recent
> comments have gone a bit off topic. Rather than debating the history of
> internet governance it would be very helpful for the AC to understand the
> general sentiment of this community with regard to the draft policy more
> directly.
> 
> With that in mind, I'd like to gather opinion and thoughts on several key
> questions. These questions should be answered in terms of how you believe
> ARIN should operate today and into the future in order to uphold its goal
of
> stewardship of the Internet number resources in its care.
> 
> 1) Do you support the principle of efficient utilization based on need
> (Conservation/Sustainability)?
> 
> 2) Do you support the principle of hierarchical aggregation (Routability)?
> 
> 3) Do you support the principle of uniqueness (Registration)?
> 
> 4) Do you support the goal of balancing these principles with each other
> under the overarching principle of Stewardship?
> 
> Please feel free to provide your thoughts on each of these items as
general
> principles. Please state a definitive support or do not support for each
> individual principle/goal and provide a brief rational for that position.
For now
> I'd like to ask that we evaluate the principles generally - and not to
argue with
> each others opinions but simply to each state our own. Once we have a
> sense of the community support, we can then dig into specific text for
each
> item based on the level of support and the rationale behind that level of
> support.
> 
> This will be very helpful as we decide our next steps with this draft
policy.
> 
> Thanks,
> ~Chris
> 
> --
> @ChrisGrundemann
> http://chrisgrundemann.com
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