North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Kremen's Buddy?

  • From: Stephen Sprunk
  • Date: Tue Sep 12 16:38:34 2006 
Thus spake <[email protected]>

[email protected] wrote:


Once this subject took off on nanog, I have been
oversaturated with people trying to "sell" me ip space.  I
have had offers for several /16's for 10,000.00 each that are
no longer in use by the companies who "own" lol them.
It seems to me that this nicely illustrates a major problem with the
current system. Here we have large blocks of IP space that, by their
own rules, ARIN should take back. It all sounds nice on paper, but
clearly there is a hole in the system whereby ARIN doesn't know and
apparently has no way of figuring out that the space is no longer in
use. It makes me wonder just how much space like that there is out
there artifically increasing IP scarcity. I don't know what the
solution is, but the way things currently work it seems like if you can
justify a block today, it's yours forever even if you stop actively
using it. Maybe allowing for some kind of IP market would cut down on
that type of hoarding -- you would at the very least change the type of
value those subnets have.
ARIN's policies allow for grandfathering of allocations/assignments made prior to ARIN's establishment at least in part because they'd be on shaky ground legally trying to revoke them for noncompliance. It's not like those folks would willingly sign an RSA that would immediately result in losing their resources. And the community has, so far, agreed with this because the problem is at least getting no worse; it's manageable to make allowances for a fixed or shrinking number of legacy address space holders.

However, I do recall that ISI ran (runs?) a program trying to contact folks who had legacy allocations and see if they were willing to return the parts they didn't need. Bill Manning reported on the progress a few times, and apparently a large number of those orgs either no longer existed or were willing to give back what they didn't need. I think this approach is acceptable to everyone, though I'd like to see more stats on what's been done and a more official sanction for the work.

Also, IIRC, folks who have legacy allocations/assignments can't get more until their existing space is up to current standards, so it's not like they're getting a free ride on the old space _and_ getting new space. All we have to complain about are the folks that have so much they'll never need more, and those are relatively few in reality. I'm pretty sure the same situation exists for non-legacy space holders; even if you comply at the time of the request, if you later fall below the standards you're safe -- but you can't get more until you're back up to the standards.

All in all, the process is decent, and it has community support. Ideal? No, but nothing ever is when lawyers get involved.

S

Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking