Lightly used IP addresses

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Fri Aug 13 23:16:31 UTC 2010


On Aug 13, 2010, at 11:31 AM, Ken Chase wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 02:15:51PM -0400, John R. Levine said:
>>>> I don't entirely understand the process.  Here's the flow chart as far
>>>> as I've figured it out:
>>>> 
>>>> 1.  A sells a /20 of IPv4 space to B for, say, $5,000
>>>> 
>>>> 2.  A tells ARIN to transfer the chunk to B
>>>> 
>>>> 3.  ARIN says no, B hasn't shown that they need it
>>>> 
>>>> 4.  A and B say screw it, and B announces the space anyway
>>>> 
>>>> 5.  ???
>>> 
>>> 6.	ARIN receives a fraud/abuse complaint that A's space is being used 
>>> by B.
>>> 7.	ARIN discovers that A is no longer using the space in accordance 
>>> with their RSA
>>> 8.	ARIN reclaims the space and A and B are left to figure out who owes 
>>> what to whom.
>> 
>> 9.  A and B ignore ARIN's email and continue to announce what they've been 
>> announcing.
>> 
>> 10.  ARIN attempts to allocate the /20 to someone else, who is not amused.
>> 
>> Note that at this point ARIN presumably has no more v4 space left, so a 
>> threat never to allocate more space to A or B isn't very scary.  Given its 
>> limited practical leverage, ARIN is only effective insofar as its members 
>> and customers agree that playing by ARIN's rules is more beneficial than 
>> ignoring them.
> 
> Right, and Im answering my own question here, for (8) about the reclaiming - 
> what upstream is going to stop carrying prefixes from a downstream that's
> 'illegally' announcing them? Is this upstream going to cut that customer off and
> lose the revenue, just to satisfy ARIN's bleating? From what I gather, all that
> ARIN can do is remove the NS records for the i-a.a reverse zone for the offending
> block, making SMTP a little trickier from the block, but not much else.
> 
ARIN can do quite a bit more if the resources are under RSA. If they are legacy
resources (which I don't believe there are such things as legacy /20s), then,
it's a bit murkier, but, I wouldn't completely count ARIN out.

> Unless I didnt see the other large sticks ARIN's carrying? I've never seen them
> send hired goons to anyone's door... yet?

Contract law anyone? Perhaps you should re-read your RSAs.

Owen





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