[arin-ppml] Squatting the argument against Prop-266 (Was: Solving the squatting problem)

[Owen DeLong]

>> You make an excellent point, I think squatting with its prevalence and longevity make the point that the RIRs, and IANA, don't
>> have the ability to enforce anything about how routers are configured. The RIRs and IANA simply coordinate those that consent to
>> be coordinated, the moment anyone withdraws that consents to their coordination, the RIRs no longer have any power.  
> 
>> If proponents of Prop-266 believe the RIRs are powerless to do anything about squatting
>> how do the RIRs have the power to do anything about accidental or
>> malicious route announcmnets either.
> 
> "Persistent/continued, intentional route announcements”.

Carlos,

IMHO, you entirely missed David’s point.

RIRs are a key body for coordination of cooperating bodies participating in the internet providing for an accounting of the uniqueness of address utilization by various entities. Without unique addresses, things get bad fast. I think we can all agree on that.

Where you run off the rails is in believing that the RIRs have anything other than the ability to register unique blocks fo addresses for those who wish to cooperate in order to preserve uniqueness.

The RIRs don’t run (many) routers. They don’t control people who run routers. They have no basis for authority to make demands of people that run routers except to the extent that they can create policies about address space registration and conditions on those registrations.

They cannot prevent an organization which does not have a contractual relationship from announcing any prefix it wants. It’s not clear that they can do much about that against an entity that does have a contractual relationship, if the blocks in question aren’t part of that contract.

The issue with prop 266 isn’t that it doesn’t solve everything, it’s that it depends on the assumption that RIRs have power/authority that they simply do not have.

Owen