[ncc-services-wg] Policy proposal for services to legacy Internet resource holders

On 28/08/2012 17:42, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> DDN.MIL NIC would tend to disagree with your statement (similar emails were
> sent back in the "old" days to most NRENs since we were the Internet
> pioneers):

Hank,

Like all windows into the past, the DDN's email prompts more questions than
it answers.

The thing that immediately jumps out is that if IUCC was acting as a
de-facto national internet registry at the time and registered IP addresses
on behalf of all Israeli users, not just those in the academic community,
then does IUCC maintain some sort of beneficial claim of registration over
subnets of the blocks you list - the sort of claim that would entitle you
to say that because this was IUCC space rather than IUCC member space, that
it really ought to be covered under IUCC's LIR membership for any future
potential argument about a RIPE ERX policy?

E.g. if ECI Telecom or Bezeq (who received 147.234.0.0/8 and 147.235.0.0/8
respectively, both of which came out of ISRAELB-BLOCK) were to state that
their ERX address blocks belonged absolutely to them and that IUCC had no
claims whatsoever over them, what would IUCC's position be?

This is of course a matter for IUCC and ECI Telecom / Bezeq to resolve.
But let's say that IUCC admitted that it had no claim to Bezeq's address
block, then where would IUCC stand on 147.233.0.0/8 which is registered to
the Open University?  Would IUCC's position be that this is different just
because they're a member of IUCC.  If so, why?  I can't see any clear
answer here.  Maybe you reached an explicit agreement with OpenU about
this, but that would be outside the context of your statement about DDN-NIC
above?

Alternatively, could IUCC feasibly claim that it had a beneficial interest
in Bezeq's block: 147.235.0.0/8?  I really doubt it.

I'm not fishing for answers to these specific questions, btw.  I'm
interested in the general issue: who is the ultimate assignee of the ERX
blocks which were handed out via the NRENs and what claims are both they
and the NRENs making over it?  And if there is a precedent for tacitly
agreeing that e.g. commercial / governmental ERX assignees are not subject
to any NRENs' beneficial claims over the address space for whatever reason,
then on what basis are you claiming that the NRENs have any beneficial
claim over their members' address space?

When I was registering address space from the InterNIC in the early 1990s,
the address space was registered directly, and it was not done via a local
agent (e.g. HEAnet in the case of Ireland).  There was a clear
understanding in all cases that the address space was registered to the
individual assignee regardless of whether the registration was handled
directly by the assignee or via a service provider (both HEAnet/as1213 and
IEUnet/as2110 provided this service at the time).  There was also a clear
understanding that this address space would remain with the assignee,
where-ever they happened to be connected to.  There was no concept that the
address space would be anything other than provider independent - in fact
the idea was anathema.

At least this was the case in Ireland - Israel may have been different, but
I see no evidence of it in the email that you received from the DDN-NIC,
regardless of talk of "your allotment".  It looks much more like IUCC was
acting as the equivalent of a modern day National Internet Registry of the
form they currently deploy in east asia (which also receives "allocations"
 from apnic), rather than a pre-RIR-era LIR handling modern style PA
address space.

Nick