US CODE: Title 15, Chapter 1, Section 2.

[Jerry Scharf]

karl at CAVEBEAR.COM said:
> My use of the term "routability" was ment in the prospective sense -- 
> that once a block was actually given topological significance -- i.e. 
> that it's exchange points with the rest of the world were determined 
> -- then there would be no artificial limits on the acceptance of that 
> new block.  (By artificial I mean things like "ISP X won't accept 
> your advertisements because your block is too small.")

> In other words, membership in ARIN, or perhaps even the use of an 
> address by an ISP of a block carved from a larger ARIN allocated 
> block might need to carry with it an obligation on the part of that 
> ISP to honor all other ARIN derived allocations.  

Taking your lead with removing the steam (thanks).

The response to this is that all ARIN can do is a best effort tracking of the 
ISP's current policies in future allocations. These may need to be offset 
against other goals in 2050. There is no way ARIN can make any guarantees 
about future routability, since that is clearly beyond their control.

The idea that ISPs must honor as routable forever any blocks ARIN allocates 
would be a serious issue and be grounds for many people to withdraw support 
from the proposal. The ISPs view this as their business/technical domain. They 
believe that if the time comes and they think it is a better answer to filter 
the TWD (192/8), that it is their business decision to make. No personal 
opinion expressed, just the statement that many ISPs won't accept these terms. 
(envision threats of lawyers...)

Also, is there any reason to continue to bother the DoJ people with this 
discussion? If not, people should stop copying them on these mail messages. 
(Imagine the poor person getting all this technical banter ...)

A comment about duplicate IP addresses: It is specious to talk about people 
who ignore the registry when talking about unique allocation from registries 
(again this issue of no control.) The question about duplicate IP addresses 
can only be discussed on "Has there ever been a case where two registry 
allocations for the same IP address were issued?" We all know people can 
ignore the registry and pick addresses, we each have our own fantasy on how 
this would turn out, almost always ugly.

Jerry