David Conrad wrote:
John,
On Feb 18, 2008, at 9:48 AM, John Lee wrote:
ARIN (and other RIRs) and the rules of use of IP address were
specifically setup to allow global communications around the world
with a large number of entities on an equal basis.
More IP addresses were allocated prior to the creation of the RIRs than
since. The terms under which those early allocations were made is a
bit fuzzy (to put it mildly).
When IANA free pool exhaustion happens or even appears to be imminent,
one can expect push for allocation policies to be changed drastically
towards the miserly. That will likely affect the value equation even
before pool exhaustion.
Furthermore, I expect more credence will be lent to the reclaiming
efforts, and pre-RIR swamp space has lots of candidates.
Class-E, rfc3330 and similar reclamation might occur as well.
"effort not worth the return" objections, maybe its true, not under
current allocation guidelines and resulting burn rate. Therefore, I
would favor not performing reclamations until/unless those are changed.
Consider under new drastically more miserly policies, likely return will
be worth the effort, if not right away, then in a bit in the future.
ipv4 experimental space has no reason to exist, experiments should all
be ipv6 anyways.
ARIN is attempting to remedy this
fuzziness by creating a "legacy RSA" in which you give up some
potential rights in exchange for some potential rights (it also asserts
ARIN has the right to decide what happens with all the legacy space
which causes some concern internationally, but that's not relevant
here). See http://www.arin.net/registration/legacy/ index.html for more
information.
PS: The RIRs are community driven and so if the community wants to
become a market place, they can petition ARIN have a vote and change
if the majority of the community wants to.
The question really isn't whether the ARIN community will want a market
to exist. A market, albeit black or grey, exists already.
And we should be taking into account the value addresses have in this
market as opposed to the "white" market, on an ongoing basis.
The
question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free pool
exhausts.
I expect the value will skyrocket, whether on the black, grey or white
market.
Ignoring the market will likely result in the
marginalization of ARIN for services such as registration of address
space (for good or ill). Not ignoring the market will likely result in
all sorts of 'fun', in the worst case similar to what has occurred in
the domain name market.
If there is a market, it makes little sense to ignore it, gonna be all
sorts of consequences to doing so.
"Choose wisely."
Regards,
-drc
