[arin-ppml] Change of Use and ARIN (was: Re: AFRINIC And The Stability Of The Internet Number Registry System)

[Owen DeLong]

> On Sep 8, 2021, at 18:33 , John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> 
> On 8 Sep 2021, at 5:02 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com <mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:
>> On Sep 7, 2021, at 11:03 , John Curran <jcurran at arin.net <mailto:jcurran at arin.net>> wrote:
>>> ...
>>> The conservation principle an overall principle contained in section 1 – i.e. "1. Principles and Goals of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)” i
>>> 
>>> As such, the issuance of number resources must be for “a technical need for them in support of operational networks."
>> 
>> Right… And an LIR’s customers with operational networks would be such a valid technical need regardless of where or how
>> that LIR’s customers connected those networks to whatever other networks. What am I missing?
> 
> Owen - 
> 
> That would be a valid technical need for IP address space, but it is not the ISP’s technical need driven by their operational networks (unless the ISP is providing some connectivity services.) 
> 
> A  customer with an operational network could easily have technical need for additional IP address space – for example, a customer which has the need for additional space to grow their network can come to ARIN and get more space per policy. 
> 
>>> They do distribute IP addresses to their customers as a result of the provision of their network services. 
>> 
>> So this is still another organization’s technical need for number resources. It’s not the LIR’s need for number resources,
>> it’s their customers’ need for those resources. That’s my point.
> 
> It is interesting how hard you try to twist interpretation against plain language, common sense, and ARIN’s entire history of existing  practice – all in order to make leasing to address space to parties have no relation to your network services somehow now be a valid technical need for more address space.
> 
> Under such a theory, the first LIR at ARIN could claim that they have technical need for more blocks to support their forthcoming leasing to all cloud providers in North America (a lot of need indeed)…   The fact that you have business relationship with a party does not make _their_ technical requirements somehow into _your_ technical requirements. 
> 
> On the other hand. when an ISP connects a customer to the Internet, they often do need to supply some address space to the customer for use in the customer’s network - it might be a single IP address for a customer CPE, or it could be an large block because the customer wants all of the devices on their internal network to now have Internet access – i.e. precisely why they purchased Internet service.   The address space needed by the ISP is a valid technical need because ISP requires it for the connectivity service being provisioned, even if some of it is sub-assigned and utilized on customers network infrastructure.    

Actually, they don’t NEED to, they WANT to. They can simply refer their customer to the RIR to obtain the addresses directly. This is inconvenient and works against aggregation, but it is 100% technically possible.

So either the customers NEED for addresses extends to the LIR and becomes the LIR’s need or it doesn’t.

> This is common practice, and nearly everyone in the ARIN ISP community is both aware of it and has submitted resource requests accordingly. 

Yes, lots of things that are not necessarily policy are common practice. I’m not claiming that this common practice doesn’t fit within policy, but I am claiming that policy does not actually prescribe a need for connectivity to be integral to this extension of need and it does not actually proscribe the provision by an LIR of an address management service exclusive of connectivity.

You seem to be arguing that a plaintext reading of ARIN policy provides such a proscription, yet I cannot find it.

>>> Principle applies the same either way.   As you noted, there is a way around that - provision VPN services with IP address as a component of that service.
>> 
>> OK, so as long as GRE tunnels that never actually carry traffic are created as a fig leaf to cover the lease, it’s OK and within policy, ...
> 
> Incorrect, as that is not what I said – at no point did I say “VPN services that never carry traffic” represent a valid technical need. 

No, you said a VPN service wherein the aggregate is announced by the VPN provider even if the clients announce more specifics elsewhere would represent a valid technical need.

Now, riddle me this… If a VPN service announces an aggregate and their clients all announce more specifics through other transit providers, how and where would that VPN ever actually carry traffic?

> A party which indicates on their resource request that their technical need is driven by growth in VPN services that _never_ will carry any actual traffic would be obviously be engaging in some creative fabrication, and thus declined. 

There is no need to indicate on the application whether the VPN in question will ever carry traffic or not. Leave that blank. ARIN might make assumptions, but those assumptions can’t actually be verified one way or the other anyway.

>> but without such GRE tunnels, you believe it to be a violation of policy.
>> 
>> Glad to have you on record for this (though still not convinced that’s what the policy manual actually says).
> 
> As noted above, you can try to reinterpret the policy language all day to justify leasing as a valid need for number resources, but that’s contrary to the understanding of the ARIN community and more than two decades of operating practice.
> 
> If you really want to change ARIN’s existing number resource policy to meet your creative new world view, please put in a policy proposal to make the change and let the community discuss and decide whether solely utilization due to leasing of address space to others should be considered a valid need for receiving additional number resource issuance. 

No policy proposal is needed. Fig leaves are much easier and you’ve already stated that they cover the situation adequately.

While I view the requirement for the fig leaf to be kind of silly, it makes some people happy and it costs next to nothing to implement, so why go to the trouble to pursue a policy modification that isn’t all that likely to succeed due to the various emotional reactions that it would engender?

Owen

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