[arin-ppml] Internet Fairness

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 05:15:46PM +0000, Steven Ryerse wrote:

> .com permutations is limited too.

Yes, and my mail pointed out how.

> IPv4 addresses and .com domain names are both just Internet
> resources that Internet users need to use the Internet.

They're different kinds of resources, though.  Protocol parameters are
also just Internet resources, but there are different policies for how
you get a DNS RRTYPE number, a UDP or TCP port number, and so on; and
these policies are different to how one gets an IP address or a domain
name.  Saying, "Just resources, therefore they should have the same
policy," effectively claims that there are no differences between
these kinds of resources; I claim that's false.

> Also IPv4 cannot somehow be saved by conservation.  Regardless of
> any policy, ARIN will run out of IPv4 probably within the next year.
> If .com domain names were nearing runout, would that really make it
> OK to start denying small Orgs .com domain name requests?

The argument for the minimum allocation policy is not "size of org",
but "amount of use given the allocation and minimum allocation size
given the Internet routing system".  I don't have any trouble
imagining that a name registry approaching identifier exhaustion could
adopt a policy that domain names in the registry would be required to
be used (or the registration would be revoked).  In fact, some name
registries do have separate allocation policies for "reservation" and
"registration".  Xxx does this, for instance (a very effective
revenue-plumping move, I am told).  Of course, the differences between
naming and numbering probably mean that such a restriction in the name
case would be silly except in particular cases (like xxx).  And that's
sort of the point: the analogy isn't doing the work you want here,
because the differences between names and numbers means that policy
for one of them is not good in the other case.  For example, number
resources can't be handed out one at a time for the sake of the
routing system, but domain names are _always_ allocated that way.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com