[address-policy-wg] 2015-01 New Policy Proposal (Alignment ofTransfer Requirements for IPv4 Allocations)

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 01:43:41PM +0330, Saeed Khademi wrote:
> 2- IP allocations are indeed property of IANA. They distributed it through 
> RIRs & LIRs to end-users, free of charge. And end-users are entitle to use
>     these allocations, as long as their initial criteria are valid. And if 
> initial criteria are not valid anymore, RIRs may take back the address space
>     according to their policies.

This is indeed the crucial point here.  The RIPE policies do not have
provisions for taking back *allocations* if the allocation criteria are
no longer valid.  So, voluntarily giving them back is always fine, but
if a LIR clings to the space (and pays their bills and does not do anything
fraudulent), the NCC can not forcibly take back the space.

The reasons for this is easy to see - historically, ISPs did not shrink,
they just grew, and needed more and more space.  Unless they went bankrupt,
in which case the space went to whoever bought them, or back to the 
RIPE NCC.

Nowadays, "LIR" is not necessarily "ISP" anymore, and the business has 
changed as well - like, no longer giving out /24s to customers but single
addresses behind CGNs...

[..]
> Anyway, as Sander explained, for now selling IP addresses is alright 
> according to existing policy. And there were lots of talks there.
> I am not suggesting a new proposal, I just had problem understanding the 
> concept of selling IPs, so I asked. ( I'm still against selling IPs )

The thing is that we can't really regulate or prevent the "selling" bit as 
such - not without preventing completely "ok!" business transactions (like,
I want to buy another ISP with all their assets, it should be fine to also
take over their address space).

What we *can* do is to enforce proper *documentation* of transfers, so it
is always clear who is the current holder of an address block, who is
permitted to announce it into BGP, etc. - and that, I think, is one of the
most important roles of a RIR in the post-depletion era.

Gert Doering
        -- APWG chair
-- 
have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?

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