[arin-ppml] On IPv4 free pool runout and transfer policy requirements for the ARIN region

[William Herrin]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 11:30 AM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> On Jun 5, 2015, at 8:52 AM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
>> Need #1: So that organizations may buy and sell portions of their
>> networking business and have the registry accurately reflect the
>> current owner of those business elements.
>>
>> Need #2: So that IP addresses may be quickly and efficiently
>> reassigned from one organization's lower-value applications to
>> another's higher-value applications.
>

> Could you clarify the attributes of each of these requirements?
> Is #1 the need to transfer along with operational network, and
> #2 the need to move IP addresses to a better economic use,
> or do I misunderstand your distinction?

Hi John,

You have it just about right, although I wouldn't use the word
"economic." I see "better use" as a private matter between the
releasing and acquiring registrants. Whatever they happen to think
"better" is something economic, personal or somehow "closer to God."
Not something for which we should have or employ an understanding of
at the registry level.


> Alas, I was unclear…  I said “need for transfer policy” when I was truly
> thinking slightly beyond that into “requirements for a transfer policy”,
> which would include any secondary objectives.  Obviously, if no IPv4
> transfer policy is needed, then there is no requirement with respect to
> minimum size block - I perhaps jumped the gun and presumed that
> there would clearly be a need identified for such a policy and that other
> related requirements of any such policy should be discussed.

Roger. Then I'd also add:

Reciprocity. It must not be practical to transfer addresses to a
registry where registrants of record are not permitted to transfer
addresses from the registry. Not just directly but through
second-order activity too. E.g. I would disallow ARIN->APNIC absent a
commitment from APNIC to disallow a subsequent APNIC->CNNIC activity
due to CNNIC disallowing all out-transfers.

Records First. ARIN should publish information about non-compliant
transfers that nevertheless happened in real-world terms, even if it
has to declare that information to be "invalid" or "unsubstantiated."
Potentially incorrect information about the current user is better
than no information about the current user.

BGP protectionism. The Internet BGP table is somewhat fragile. The
problem is exacerbated by a tragedy of the commons problem comprised
of the lack of any practical way to exact payment for the routes in
the local BGP table from the organization which first announced those
routes into the BGP system. To whatever extent practical, transfers
should avoid inducing or requiring further fragmentation in the myriad
routing tables that comprise that very expensive system.

I'm not convinced about having hard policy for minimum transfer sizes.
I think that could be better managed as an ARIN business matter by
requiring anyone requesting an unusually small transfer to sign a
letter to the effect that, "Undersigned registrant acknowledges that
address blocks smaller than /24, including the requested block, are
ordinarily _not usable_ on the public Internet. Registrant requests
transfer despite said impairment."

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>