[arin-ppml] re-org question

[Matthew Petach]

On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 7:55 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> You can return as small as a /24.
>
> If you’re using half, then you can keep it.
>
> So, at most, you have to renumber 126 hosts out of each of half of your /25s.
>
> How is this not minimal again?
>
> Owen


I suspect Owen is trolling for effect here.

Renumbering 126 hosts out of 255 is only
slightly less than half.

I'm guessing Owen would be unhappy, were he to be
told by his doctor that he needed a surgical operation
in which a minimal amount of his body mass would be
removed; but upon delving deeper, found that the
doctor would be removing slightly less than half his
body.

Using the term "minimal" to apply to renumbering
nearly half a block strays well past the realm of
'stretching the definition' into the neighborhood of
'trolling'.

If the community does indeed think the language
should stay, and that renumbering should be required,
we should perhaps put some clarity around what is
expected.  If an organization is using 40% of each /24,
would the ARIN community be happy if the organization
renumbered such that alternating /24s were now 80%
filled, and returned every other /24 to ARIN, as individual
/24 subnets?  That would meet the letter of the law, so
to speak, but would ensure those blocks could never
be aggregated into a larger allocation.  (As a side note,
this could be a good way to ensure a steady supply of /24s
for small entrants, while ensuring no larger entity can ever
make use of them.)

For the record, I think the sentence is confusing, and
should have the "will" replaced with "may", to read as
follows:

"ARIN will proceed with processing transfer requests even if the
number resources of the combined organizations exceed what
can be justified under current ARIN policy.  In that event, ARIN *may* work
with the resource holder(s) to transfer the extra number resources to
other organization(s) or accept a voluntary return of the extra number
resources to ARIN."

emphasis on *may* included only to make it clear which word
was changed; emphasis need not stay in the resulting NRPM
text.  That should clear up confusion about it being a requirement,
and instead make it clear this is an optional exercise.

Thanks!

Matt