[102557] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Conrad)
Tue Feb 19 14:07:44 2008
Cc: Nanog <nanog@nanog.org>
From: David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>
To: John Curran <jcurran@mail.com>
In-Reply-To: <p06240804c3e0b89a7261@[192.168.3.76]>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:00:11 -0800
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
John,
On Feb 19, 2008, at 9:17 AM, John Curran wrote:
> What we now face is the simply reality of whether enabling a
> financial incentive for those who don't adhere to the community
> spirit incentive is overall worthwhile for the Internet.
Not really.
I figure "community spirit" as a significant motivator died long, long
ago and even if it did continue to exist, it certainly wouldn't
survive the upcoming free-for-all in two or three years.
The simple reality is that businesses who require IPv4 addresses to
continue operations will do what is necessary to obtain them,
regardless of what an informational document published over a decade
ago or informal agreements with individuals sadly passed away might
say. ARIN and the other RIRs can continue to try to ignore that
reality, but the almost certain end state of that action is to make
ARIN and the other RIRs irrelevant in IPv4 registration management
(who would be relevant is left to the reader as an exercise).
> Some will
> say this has certain unsavory aspects to it (such as discouraging
> altruistic return of address space) but that shouldn't preclude it
> from being considered at all.
The question really isn't whether or not financial incentives should
be considered. They already are (as you well know). The question
really should be how (or even if) the existing policy bodies can
impose some form of self-regulation to keep the inevitable market
behavior from completely running amok. Quoting sections of 2050
written when the Internet was quite different and free IPv4 space was
plentiful, particularly given subsequent agreements between ICANN and
the RIRs removed IANA from any significant address management role, is
merely wasting time.
Regards,
-drc
