[arin-ppml] IPv6 Transfers (was :Draft Policy ARIN-2018-1: Allow Inter-regional ASN Transfers

[Job Snijders]

On Sat, Feb 03, 2018 at 10:17:02AM -0800, Scott Leibrand wrote:
> > On Feb 3, 2018, at 5:12 AM, hostmaster at uneedus.com wrote:
> > 1) A company is relocating its headquarters from a location served
> > by an RIR, to another location served by a different RIR, and wants
> > everything in their new home region.
> > 
> > 2) A company decides to buy another company with few assets, but
> > holds a 16 bit ASN in another RIR region.  They then want to bring
> > that ASN back to ARIN so they can add it to their registration plan.
> > This is similar to M&A of companies with IPv4 addresses as assets,
> > since they can not get a 16 bit ASN directly from ARIN.
> > 
> > 3) They have so much equipment scattered around the world with the
> > old ASN, that they do not want to renumber just because their
> > headquarters moved to a region served by a different RIR.  If the
> > region moved to is ARIN, in most cases they can save money by
> > putting the moved ASN on their registration plan with their address
> > space.
> > 
> > In any case, if ARIN allows transfers, it is highly unlikely that
> > that policy would ever be applied to anything other than a 16 bit
> > ASN as there are plenty of 32 bit ASN's available in all regions.
> 
> All three scenarios apply equally to 16 and 32 bit ASNs. If it’s
> easier for everyone involved to transfer an ASN between RIRs along
> with any IPv4 resources, there’s no reason to renumber (which requires
> cooperation from BGP peers). 

I'd like to emphasize that renumbering ASNs can be a very cumbersome and
expensive venture (be it a 16-bit or 32-bit ASN). There are notable
public examples of M&As where the integration and renumbering of related
ASNs took years.

Just because there is no shortage of 32-bit ASNs in another region
doesn't imply I'd be willing to absorb the cost of renumbering an ASN.

Kind regards,

Job