[arin-ppml] 2014-1 Out of Region Use

[John Curran]

On Dec 15, 2014, at 1:17 AM, Steven Ryerse <SRyerse at eclipse-networks.com> wrote:
> ...
> I find that line of thinking about as far as one can get from the spirit of Jon Postel and the way he went about advancing the Internet.  When I read the original Mission Statement for ARIN or even the current one, I don't see that "needs" are more important than the actual mission of advancement and allocation.  Good stewardship should be practiced but NOT to the detriment of the mission of advancement and allocation.  

Steven - 

Note that Jon Postal was instrumental to ARIN's founding and served 
an ex-officio Trustee at its inception.  The policies that were in 
effect at the time are stated in RFC 2050 (which Jon was one of the 
authors) and includes the following text regarding goals - 

"
   Internet address space is distributed according to the following
   three goals:

   1) Conservation: Fair distribution of globally unique Internet address
   space according to the operational needs of the end-users and Internet
   Service Providers operating networks using this address space.
   Prevention of stockpiling in order to maximize the lifetime of the
   Internet address space.
    ...
   3) Registration: Provision of a public registry documenting address
   space allocation and assignment.  This is necessary to ensure
   uniqueness and to provide information for Internet trouble shooting
   at all levels.
   ..
   All the above goals may sometimes be in conflict with the interests of
   individual end-users or Internet service providers.  Careful analysis
   and judgement is necessary in each individual case to find an
   appropriate compromise.
"

This supports your view that the goal of conservation is not more 
important than provision of a public registry - the goals must be 
balanced with one another.  

These same principles live on in ARIN's policy development process,
<https://www.arin.net/policy/pdp.html>, which states:

"Policies for Internet number resource management must be evaluated for soundness against three overarching technical requirements: conservation, aggregation, and registration. ... Policies must achieve a technically sound balance of these requirements, and support for these technical requirements must be documented in the assessment of the policy change."

> In my opinion this community is so caught up in making sure needs based policies are followed, that it has lost sight of the real mission of advancing the Internet.  Regardless of your personal definition of need, why is some org who doesn't have a need (as currently defined by policy) now precluded from getting resources?  How does that advance the Internet?  I never met Jon Postel but from what I've heard about him, I suspect he would frown on some of the current policies regarding needs.

Whether he would frown is unknowable, but it's unlikely that Jon would
be surprised that we were allocating accordingly to operational need.  
(He'd probably be more surprised that we had market-based transfers going 
on, given that RFC 2050 directs reclamation for any unneeded address 
space...)

> My comments below and others I have made are intended to try to bring some balance into the discussion and my hope is that some day in the near future that will happen.  I certainly don't desire there be no rules at all but the very loose rules followed by Jon Postel worked pretty well advancing the Internet. 

As noted above, the guidelines for address management have evolved over 
time, and even before ARIN have included distribution based on operational 
need; i.e. your reference to Jon's "loose rules" is probably not correct
except in the very earliest days of the Internet.  It's probably far more 
important that the policies used in the management of IP address space are 
developed by the community per their current requirements and expectations.

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN