[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2021-6: Remove Circuit Requirement

[Owen DeLong]

> On Sep 23, 2021, at 16:25 , William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 4:15 PM Mike Burns <mike at iptrading.com> wrote:
>> I add value by transferring cash to somebody else in the hope I can lease the purchased IPv4 out for a profit before China and the DoD dump addresses on the market.
> 
> Hi Mike,
> 
> ARIN leases addresses to you. You turn around and lease them to
> someone else at a higher price. You add nothing in the process, no
> network services or anything like that. The lessee can't rent them
> directly from ARIN, not because of cost or risk or whatever but ARIN
> doesn't have any left to rent. It's about as straightforward an
> example of rent seeking as you can get.

That’s not likely the real situation, however…

Likely, Mike does research and fines underutilized addresses and approaches
the current registrant and asks if they’d be interested in receiving MRC in
exchange for the ability to use those addresses. Mike then takes a risk and
begins paying said registrant monthly/quarterly/yearly/whatever for the
use of those addresses at some wholesale leasing price. Then he turns
around and tries to find an entity with need that (for whatever reason,
capital intensity, temporary need, etc.) wants to lease rather than buy
a block of addresses and provides them. Yes, for all the obvious reasons,
the price he charges to lease to his customer is higher than the price
he pays to his supplier, but he’s basically a retailer adding value in the
form of acquiring the wholesale goods and matching them to the needs
of the retail customer.

ARIN is not finding the sources of addresses who are willing to lease,
but not sell… ARIN Is not even finding the sources of addresses who
are willing to sell. Brokers are fulfilling that role for sales and are the
most likely ones to be fulfilling that role for leasing as well.

Owen