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.
