IPv4 address exchange

Tue Apr 19 01:15:25 UTC 2011

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 7:33 PM, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
> [ARIN] does not have full buy-in from those who they would try to regulate

ARIN has all the buy-in they need: No transit network will (except by
act of omission/mistake) allow you to announce IPs that aren't
registered to you in an RIR database, or delegated to you by the
registrant of those IPs.

I am unapologetic when it comes to ARIN.  They are very bad at a lot
of things, and they allow themselves to be railroaded by organizations
that have out-sized budgets / influence (see my post a few years ago
regarding Verizon Wireless.)  My list of "ARIN gripes" is as long as
the day, but I'll spare you the details.

If we didn't have ARIN, we would probably have one of two things:
1) no "regulator" at all, thus BGP anarchy (we came surprisingly close
to that in the 1990s at least once)
2) a worse "regulator" who is totally uninterested in the small ISP /
hosting shop / Fortune 50,000, as opposed to the Fortune 500

If ARIN's primary benefit to us is to protect us from these two
unarguably worse evils, they are doing a fine job.  Even from my
outsider's perspective, I understand that ARIN is sometimes forced to
make significant compromises, which we may find objectionable, to
prevent us from being truly thrown to the wolves.

Would I like ARIN to function better?  Sure, in plenty of ways.  I do
not think it would function better if it were "just a WHOIS database."

-- 
Jeff S Wheeler <jsw at inconcepts.biz>
Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts