North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Can a customer take IP's with them?

  • From: Howard C. Berkowitz
  • Date: Wed Jun 23 19:17:02 2004


does your contract with your customers state that the space
is non-portable, that they can't take it with them and that
they WILL have to renumber ??  If so then they are asking
the court to change the contract you and they entered, which
i doubt would happen.

the legal risk here is if the court gets it in their head
that IP's are like phone numbers and that they (numbers)
should be portable......

Judge:  "So what exactly is an IP address"

Plantif: "Judge, an IP address is a unique number that is
assigned to each computer on my clients network.  It unique
like a phone number, and like each person in the company has
a unique phone number, they must have a unique IP address"

Judge: "So basicly its like a phone number for computers."

Plantif: "Yes"
This would absolutely have to be challenged on cross-examination. Were I the attorney, especially if the plaintiff had mentioned telephone number portability, I would ask the plaintiff to explain what additional work had to be done to the POTS network to implement portability. Should the plaintiff start mumbling, I'd impugn his credibility, and then ask a bunch of hard questions about SS7 (including the TCAP mechanism for portable number translation), how IP routing works, how IP routing has no authoritative mechanism for global translation, etc. I'd interrogate the customer about DNS and why they weren't able to solve their portability requirement with it. I'd look for detailed familiarity with RFC 2071 and 2072.

I wouldn't expect the customer to be able to answer many of these. As the defendant, I would expect to bring in my own expert witness who is very good at explaining these differences, and how the telephone and IP routing environments are different.

also how much space are we talking about here ?? a /19
or a /27 ? or ???   If its smaller than a /20, Hell
let them announce it, most places won't take the route
and their connectivity will be dorked.

You might also advise ARIN that this customer has IP space
that is not being used and that it should be reclaimed
as they didn't renumber from your space.


john brown

On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 01:16:48AM -0400, Alex Rubenstein wrote:

 (also sent to nanog)



 Should a customer be allowed to force a carrier to allow them to announce
 non-portable IP space as they see fit to any other carriers of their
 choosing when they are no longer buying service from the original carrier
 [that the space is assigned to]?

 According to ARIN regulations, the space does not "belong" to us but we
 have the right to assign or revoke the space to our customers as we see
 fit. In addition ARIN regulations specifically prohibit us from transferring
 or selling the IP space to another customer (even if we want to).

 NAC has a customer who is leaving NAC. As part of normal procedure (and
 also because the space provided to us by ARIN is non portable), the
 customer has been informed that the IP space used by the customer will not
 be available to be used by the customer subsequent to them leaving us.

 It should be mentioned that the following facts exist, and cannot be
 disputed:

 a) customer has obtained space directly from ARIN over a year ago, but has
 chosen not to renumber from space allocated from us. This was solely their
 choice, and we did not restrict this in any way.

 b) customer is exercising the right not to renew the business agreement,
 and is leaving NAC voluntarily.

 Thus, they are attempting to file for and obtain a temporary restraining
 order (TRO), and ask for the following:


 -- start --

         "NAC shall permit CUSTOMER to continue utilization through any
 carrier or carriers of CUSTOMER's choice of any IP addresses that were
 utilized by, through or on behalf of CUSTOMER under the current agreement
 during the term thereof (the "Prior CUSTOMER Addresses") and shall not
 interfere in any way with the use of the Prior CUSTOMER Addresses,
 > including, but not limited to:

(i) by reassignment of IP address space to any customer;
aggregation and/or BGP announcement modifications

(ii) by directly or indirectly causing the occurrence of
superseding or conflicting BGP Global Routing Table entries; filters
and/or access lists, and/or

(iii) by directly or indirectly causing reduced prioritization of
access to and/or from the Prior CUSTOMER Addresses.

NAC shall provide CUSTOMER with a LOA within 7 days of CUSTOMERS's written
request for sale,

NAC shall permit announcement of the Prior CUSTOMER Address to ANY
carrier, IP transit, or IP peering network."

-- end --


In other words, customer is asking a court to rule whether or not IP space
should be portable, when an industry-supported organization (ARIN) has
made policy that the space is in fact not portable. It can be further
argued that the court could impose a TRO that would potentially negatively
affect the operation of my network.

NAC does not want to be forced to rely on a customer's ability to properly
make complex routing updates that if done improperly could disrupt the entire
NAC network. We believe there is a great danger to NAC that their routing
mistakes could take down some or all of our network infrastructure.

Another VERY important issue to bring up: If customer is granted the legal
right to continue to use IP space that is registered to NAC by ARIN, NAC
runs into the very serious problem of being liable for all of the Spam
that could be generated by the customer and all of the RBLs that the
carrier may be added to [that of course will effect all of NAC's
customers] with no ability to revoke the IP space to protect itself. This
has to potential to effect the NAC network in a catastrophic manner.

I'd love any comments from anyone.
_______________________________________________
"Eat sushi frequently". - Avi
[email protected] is the human contact address.
[email protected] is the list posting address.
See below URL for subscribe/unsubscribe and list options:
http://inet-access.net/mailman/listinfo/list
_______________________________________________
"Eat sushi frequently". - Avi
[email protected] is the human contact address.
[email protected] is the list posting address.
See below URL for subscribe/unsubscribe and list options:
http://inet-access.net/mailman/listinfo/list
_______________________________________________
"Eat sushi frequently". - Avi
[email protected] is the human contact address.
[email protected] is the list posting address.
See below URL for subscribe/unsubscribe and list options:
http://inet-access.net/mailman/listinfo/list