[arin-ppml] About needs basis in 8.3 transfers

[David Huberman]

We're going to be a cross-roads very soon.  ARIN is going to exhaust, and network operators will be unable to obtain additional IPv4 address blocks from ARIN.  At that point, the most obvious solution for IPv4 needs will be the market.  Proper stewardship of the ARIN function demands that ARIN policy adjust to what happens in the market.  It's not the other way around, if only because that's not how markets work.

The ARIN CEO, ARIN's General Counsel, the Harvard economist ARIN pays, professors who study markets, brokers who operate in the market, and buyers and sellers who buy and sell in the market have all told the ARIN community the same story for around 5 years now: the market is going to act as a market, and ARIN policy needs to be ready for it; ARIN policy needs to make sense with the dynamics of the market.

It's hard to know how to argue with operators like Owen and the Google folks who all say the opposite; that ARIN policy should stick to the same ideals as 1995 (important ideals for a very long time!) and not adjust.  I fear the results of this kind of ostracism :(

David R Huberman
Microsoft Corporation
Senior IT/OPS Program Manager (GFS)