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

> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 12:47:49PM +0100, michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
> > Given a scenario where LIR A has addresses which they no 
> longer need, 
> > and LIR B needs addresses but the RIPE free pool is empty, then the 
> > only motivation that I can see for changing the current 
> process is to 
> > allow LIR A to sell their addresses in a secret financial 
> transaction.
> 
> This seems somewhat distorted to me.
> 
> Without the policy change, that transaction would need to be 
> done secretly.

Without policy change, LIR A no longer has the right to those 
addresses since they no longer have technical justification for
the size of allocation which they have. It is historical practice
for RIRs to not ask for the addresses to be returned right away
since there is the assumption that LIR A has the intention to use
those addresses in the future and that there will be no further
IP address allocation requests from LIR A until they have used the
addresses. This historical practice protects the larger aggregate
block size which can be announced via BGP as a single prefix.

But the new policy begins with the assumption that LIR A has no
intention to use these addresses in the future, otherwise why
would they transfer them. Further, the new policy does not protect
a single aggregated BG prefix. Under the existing policy, when 
an LIR no longer intends to use their IP addresses in a network
they are supposed to give them back to RIPE. That is OPEN and 
that is DOCUMENTED. 

An LIR could also just sell their network and all the addresses
including the extra unjustified ones. If the new owner intends 
to use those extra addresses, then there is no problem. This kind
of transfer is OPEN and it is DOCUMENTED.

Today, an LIR can sell addresses in secret if they want to.
If that is not fraud then it is certainly unethical. I would
be happy to see LIRs buying and selling IP addresses in this
way, under the current policy, because it *IS* unethical, and
it will end up with these LIRs losing the customers who want to
connect with a reputable ISP that is willing to do the hard work
to make IPv6 feasible as the core Internet protocol.

>  Big Telcos 
> with large ranges of dynamically assigned blocks have a far 
> easier stance here than small ISPs that would actually need 
> to renumber customers to free a useful block.)

And yet, these companies are ETNO members and they oppose the
change at the policy level. In other words, even if the engineering
group in a big telco might like the idea of selling some addresses
to reduce their overall costs, the regulatory relations part of the
big telco is opposed to this. What is the point of introducing a new
policy to benefit the big telcos when the big telcos do not want the
new policy?

--Michael Dillon