And so it ends...

Thu Feb 3 16:32:40 UTC 2011

On Thu, 3 Feb 2011, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> On Feb 3, 2011, at 10:11 AM, Jon Lewis wrote:
>
>> The real fun's going to be over the next several years as the RIR's 
>> become irrelevant in the acquisition of scarce IPv4 resources...and 
>> things become less stable as lots of orgs rush to implement a strange 
>> new IP version.
>
> Supposedly[*] transfers between private entities are still supposed to 
> be justified to the local RIRs.  (At least that's how it works in ARIN's 
> area.)

I was going to say this when I walked up to the mic at the IPv4 runout 
talk yesterday morning, but sat down when they said "we're going to wrap 
this up now" and ended up going and talking to the RIPE people about it.

For a year or more, there have been RIPE region LIRs willing to lease 
relatively large amounts of IPv4 to anyone willing to pay.  The ones I've 
been noticing have been "snowshoe spammers" who get their RIPE space and 
then announce it in datacenters in the US...presumably on rented dedicated 
servers from which they send spam.

My point being, the leasing of IP space to non-connectivity customers is 
already well established, whether it's technically permitted by the 
[ir]relevant RIRs.  I fully expect this to continue and spread. 
Eventually, holders of large legacy blocks will realize they can make good 
money acting as an LIR, leasing portions of their unused space to people 
who need it and can't get it, want it and don't qualify, etc.

These start-up LIRs won't be bound by RIR policies, both because in some 
cases they'll be legacy space holders with no RSA with their region's RIR, 
and because they won't be worried about eligibility for future RIR 
allocations of v4 space...because there won't be any.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
  Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
  Atlantic Net                |
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