[address-policy-wg] 2007-08 Review Period extended until 9 July 2008 (Enabling Methods for Reallocation of IPv4 Resources)

 
> Even though this will give the NCC a bit more work to do, I 
> do support this proposal. One of the main reasons being that 
> the allocations will remain to be properly registered and are 
> thus accountable.

I disagree that this will make anyone more accountable. As long as
addresses are in use on the Internet, tools such as traceroute make it
possible to identify the source of traffic, and the organization which
is actually using an IP address block. In fact, I am currently sorting
out an issue with SAIX in South Africa announcing, and passing traffic
for someone who is using one of our IP address ranges. The fact that our
address range is correctly registered in ARIN's database did not stop
someone from using it on the Internet, and the fact that the user is not
in any RIR database, does not prevent us from solving the problem.

In fact, I suspect that most companies don't even care to make the
actual user of an IP address range accountable. If the next link in the
chain is accountable, i.e. the upstream of this non-accountable IP
address user, then the problem can be quickly resolved.

Therefore, accountability is not necessary in all cases. At the same
time, RIPE can only affect accountability very indirectly with correct
database entries. The history of the RIPE database and other RIR
databases shows that they don't have a big impact on accountability and
they also do not have a great track record for accuracy. I just do not
see a connection between greater (or lesser) accountability, and a more
accurate (or less accurate) RIPE database.

--Michael Dillon