Hi, I would like to express my opinion on this policy. As a broker it's obviously in my interest to shorten the supply in order to increase the prices as my commission is directly related to the price. And probably that's what every IPv4 address broker would hope for.
As a community member I would just analyze the data. And the fact is that since the first transfer in october 2012 until now there were a total of 273.408 IPs transferred from 185.0.0.0/8 which represents 1.83% from the total 14.895.616 IPs transferred. Below is the monthly table for theese transfers: +---------+------+ | month | /22s | +---------+------+ | 2013-01 | 1 | | 2013-05 | 1 | | 2013-07 | 3 | | 2013-10 | 1 | | 2013-12 | 1 | | 2014-01 | 5 | | 2014-02 | 9 | | 2014-03 | 3 | | 2014-04 | 2 | | 2014-05 | 6 | | 2014-06 | 7 | | 2014-07 | 6 | | 2014-08 | 6 | | 2014-09 | 15 | | 2014-10 | 15 | | 2014-11 | 17 | | 2014-12 | 38 | | 2015-01 | 21 | | 2015-02 | 19 | | 2015-03 | 25 | | 2015-04 | 39 | | 2015-05 | 19 | | 2015-06 | 9 | +---------+------+ I can't see an exponential growth or a threat to the last /8 available pool. Actually as you know the pool has increased over the 2.5 years instead of being depleted. One other problem would be the name of the policy. Alignment of Transfer Requirements. It's actually a chage of transfer requirements. There were other IPs that were sold less than 2 years from the date they were obtained and that was a real problem. I will take a single example: 5.186.0.0/16. It was allocated by RIPE on 08.08.2012, during the last-mile fight for IPs and they were allocated to a natural person, which I don't suppose was running such a big business at that time to justify the real need. Then the IPs were sold on 02.07.2014. I remember it was very difficult for me to get a /14 for the biggest ISP in Romania in april 2012. How difficult was for others to get /16s, /15s, /14s which now are already sold ? How many IPs from the 5.0.0.0/8 (the pre-last one) were already sold ? 1.783.808. In my opinion theese are the IPs that were taken for free and only to be sold by "smart guys". Maybe there were some bribes involved but all the money went to the right pockets. How can any sane person compare such an abuse with the "abuse" that is happening today on the last /8 ? Obviously some people are making profit taking advantage of this but an important amount of the money goes back, as someone noted, to the community. So in this case there is a flaw that is exploited and it's results are : lower membership fees, quicker IPv4 depletion, more supply to the market helping temper the prices. Theese are the effects and I think any community member would agree that theese are all positive. If you want to analyze and do some corrections look to the abuses done in the past and find the persons that were part in that activity. We have a saying in Romania, "the country burns and the old lady brushes her hair". A plus from me to the fellow brokers that fight with all means to keep the market prices high, as I'll make more money too. A big minus from me to this policy as I think that profit should not be the only reason that drives our actions. Ciprian Nica IP Broker Limited
