[address-policy-wg] question about IPv4 legacy and transfers - should we convert legacy to non-legacy with transfers?

Moin,

am 17.07.2019 um 20:45 schrieb Scott Leibrand:
> I can comment on the ARIN case. At the time we fully intended that legacy holders (and their legal successors) should continue to be able to use the address space they got pre-ARIN under the same terms under which they were assigned it. However, there was originally no provision for legacy address holders to be able to transfer space to unrelated parties. When we added policy to allow specified transfers, we (the ARIN community) agreed that legacy holders should be able to sell and transfer their legacy holdings, but that the recipient of the space would receive it under RSA, on equal footing with anyone else receiving new address space from ARIN.

Maybe someone can quickly fill me in on how this happened under the RIR regime in the first place? I left hostmastery about twenty years ago, when 194/8 was in a state of "it's considered PA but wasn't always handed down that way, contractually; please fix this, LIRs" and space from 195/8 was clearly handed out as PA, based on and for a documented use case. Revisiting this field maybe ten years later, I learned that IP space now is a property that even can be sold (and has a value attached to it, too) — instead of needing to be returned if the inital use case doesn't exist anymore. This feels like a U-turn from ripe-083's "Finally, please understand that we are not  working  against you, but with the whole Internet community to achieve a fair distribution of the remaining address space" to me. I'm only following ap-wg for about 2,5 years now, a pointer to when and why a market for IPv4 was endorsed by the RIPE community would be very welcome.

Which brings me to the main point: maybe it's time to put a stop to the trading of IPv4 space, instead of trying to fix loopholes in the policy system supporting that market? If there's no way to transfer legacy space except back to IANA, Internic's successor, there's no need for failing policies regarding the transfer. Same goes with PI space; this was assigned to End Users, thus the only possible receipient of that space can be the issuing RIR, if that End User is no more or stops using it itself. And the same goes for PA, of course: this space was allocated to a specific LIR in a non-portable way; if that LIR goes out of business, the space has to return to the issuing RIR.

IF the RIRs are there to ensure "a fair distribution of the remaining address space", they SHOULD ensure they receive it back when the reason for the assignment or allocation ceases to exist.

Therefore, from my perspective, the answer to the question in the subject should be: No, we should stop allowing any transfer of IPv4 space, except back to the issuing party.

Thanks for reading, and no, I'm not joking or trolling here.Regards,
-kai