[arin-ppml] About needs basis in 8.3 transfers

[Mike Burns]

Hi Owen,

Finding 4 actors who want to corner the market probably wouldn’t be very 
hard. Since 25% is 1/4 of the projected market size, I would say that the 
rest of your argument is on pretty shaky ground.


It's not nearly so simple. First you would have to find four players willing 
to risk $8 billion dollars. Second you would have to have them create an 
inherently unstable cartel. Third  you would have to find sellers with that 
much space, and this would likely mean hundreds of sellers at the least and 
a years-long endeavor. Fourth you would have to process those sales in a 
transparent market where your purchases are recorded for all to see. Fifth 
you would have to believe that there would be no reaction to this public 
information vis a vis price. Sixth you would also have to believe that these 
four billionaires ignored any risk of driving the IPv6 transition which 
would make their efforts worthless. Seventh you would have to ignore the 
fact that there are already methods of acquiring space without need which to 
my knowledge have not been used by speculators, and in fact there is zero 
evidence that speculators even exist.

> We are three years into the open, post-Microsoft/Nortel market and there 
> is no evidence of hoarding in my experience. I have never fielded a phone 
> call or email from any company or individual seeking addresses they didn't 
> plan to utilize at some point, although I have fielded plenty from people 
> seeking addresses that for whatever reason ARIN policy would prohibit them 
> from registering. Perhaps other brokers on the list might report on their 
> experiences.

Address space is still available nearly for free from ARIN, especially for 
smaller organizations, so this isn’t a real test of what will happen post 
runout and any claim that it is is absurd.


Are you saying that my claim of never having heard from a speculator is 
absurd? Have you forgotten that APNIC and RIPE ran out years ago? (after 
which point they both dropped the needs test for transfers).


> Little guys benefit from the dropping of needs test for small transfers. 
> No need to navigate the ARIN process if you just need a /24 and you can't 
> get one from your upstream, or not at a reasonable cost, or because you 
> feel more secure with your own space, or because you don't wish to game 
> the system. Support of 2014-14 would allow small companies to  have this 
> option while preventing hoarding or speculation through limits on size and 
> number of transfers.  Perhaps you care to comment on whether you might 
> consider support of 2014-14 at the current size of /16 or at another size 
> that you might feel more appropriate?

Again, this is your perspective, but it’s not necessarily entirely true. It’s 
only true if you assume that the market will have a continuous supply and 
demand will be lower than supply. I would argue that the number of inter-RIR 
transfers to the APNIC region which have already been processed would 
indicate that after exhaustion, this is unlikely to be a persistent state or 
even last very long at all.

Owen I have brokered more transfers to APNIC than anybody in the world. 
Nothing I said requires that there be a continuous situation where demand is 
lower than supply. However I can report without much understanding that 
there is indeed more supply than demand in the transfer market today, based 
on my own experiences and those I have heard from other brokers.

Regards,
Mike