[arin-ppml] Team Review - policy matter?

[Owen DeLong]

On Sep 25, 2014, at 10:16 AM, Matthew Kaufman <matthew at matthew.at> wrote:

> On 9/24/2014 4:01 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>> 
>> I think that depends. If the supply continues to exceed demand, probably not. At the point where transfer demand exceeds supply and transfers start developing a waiting list, then it might make sense. I trust staff to use good judgment for this.
> 
> On which public market would one view information that showed whether transfer supply exceeds demand or the reverse? Where would this "waiting list" be kept? And isn't "price" also related to supply and demand?

I would presume that the existing STLS mechanism would be a fair gauge. If anyone has a better idea, I’m open to suggestions.

As it stands now, sellers strongly outnumber buyers there, but largely because the buyers so far aren’t willing to pay the current prices offered by the sellers.

> And if there's no open market, and no market makers (those being prohibited by ARIN policy and all), and no single "waiting list" (whatever that would mean... I'm sure there's people 'waiting' for addresses to be $1/ea while other people are not 'waiting' because they're willing to pay $20/ea), then isn't trying to tie ARIN staff behavior to something that can't be observed a little limiting? Or even nonsensical?

Markets and market makers are not prohibited by ARIN policy. What is prohibited by ARIN policy is resource acquisition by those without an ability to show a documented need to ARIN’s satisfaction.

I’m talking about a situation where there are few or no offers of IP address space on STLS at any price, not a situation where there are offers to buy at a price lower than the offers to sell, but significant inventory in the sell category, just with too high a price.

>> What I don’t want to see is undue advantages being given to transfers over free-pool requests during a time when both are possible.\
> 
> Transfers already have the advantage that they allow one to get enough space to actually do something with it. A three-month supply barely gives you time to order the equipment that would use it.

Yes… This is a very bad thing, IMHO. That is why I tried to restore the free pool process to 12 months once I realized how bad an idea that turned out to be. Perhaps I should float that policy proposal again.

>> I do not believe ARIN should be creating incentives to use transfers vs. the free pool. As I said, as long as both remain, fairness should, IMHO, dictate that they be treated the same.
> 
> ARIN policy has already created incentives to use transfers vs. the free pool. What's the problem with that... that the free pool will last longer for the people who can't afford transfers?

There are a number of problems with it. The free pool persisting longer is merely one of them.

Owen