[address-policy-wg] 2013-03 New Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (No Need - Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Clean up)

On 25/07/2013 21:50, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> I am detecting a contradiction in your argument: you say excessive costs
> associated with fees and registrations WILL stop people from hoarding
> under the current system, which underprices address blocks. But at the
> same time you are arguing that if we remove needs assessment, droves of
> "hoarders" will pay excessive and rising costs to buy up large
> quantities of number blocks they don't really need.

I'm not arguing for/against the policy and any concern I have relates to
market speculators sucking up transfers from existing holders rather than
new LIR allocations - which by any reasonable analysis is currently too
painful for anyone to bother abusing on a large scale.

> The most reasonable way to get out of this contradiction is simply to
> admit that hoarding will have a very limited impact on the remnants of
> the IPv4 address space due to existing market conditions.

I don't believe any of us is in a position to make an assumption of this form.

> The price of
> v4 blocks will rise as scarcity increases. People who pay that money
> have strong incentives to move the blocks to people who can use them to
> generate revenue. Possession of number blocks is widely distributed now,
> so no one can corner the market.

no-one can corner the market in terms of overall possession of assigned
address, but my concern is about speculators reducing liquidity in the
market by hoovering up transferred addresses rather than getting lots of
tiny new allocations from the lirs.  Because there is relatively little
liquidity in the market at the moment, this probably isn't very difficult
or very expensive to do, yet it could have a significant effect on pricing
and availability.

> The real hoarders are the legacy holders who are not releasing their
> addresses as widely as possible now. Why? Because needs assessment
> prevents them from transaction with many willing buyers. If you were
> really concerned about hoarding, you wouldn't be talking about some
> hypothetical future state, you'd be talking about the situation we are
> in right now. 30% of the v4 address space is hoarded.

I mentioned this as a relevant factor in one of my emails yesterday.

> Hoarding is an economic phenomenon, driven by economic incentives. If
> you want to argue it will take place, don't just assert it, provide a
> coherent economic analysis.

"Please provide more convincing hand-waving".  Right :-)

Nick