IP range for lease

Tue Jul 11 21:01:58 UTC 2023

> On Jul 11, 2023, at 10:02, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 8:47 AM Owen DeLong via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
>>> – Leasing of IP address blocks independent of connectivity is not explicitly recognized in ARIN number resource policy (i.e. there is no policy that specifically allows or prohibits such activity.)
>> 
>> Correct me if I am wrong here, but in general, that which is not explicitly prohibited is implicitly allowed.
> 
> Hi Owen,
> 
> You're wrong-ish. "Address leasing" is not prohibited per se, it just
> doesn't count as in-use for the utilization requirements.

Yes, but that lack of counting while apparently not making it into the NRPM was definitely discussed
extensively with the community and the AC and ARIN staff. This is admittedly from memory, but
IIRC, the conclusion was that was the best possible interpretation of existing policy as written.

> Consider Amazon AWS. You can have an "elastic IP address" that's not
> attached to a running server. If it stays that way for most of the
> month, they charge you for it explicitly rather than wrap it up in the
> general server charge. In other words, they lease the address without
> any associated connectivity.

Well… Before the lawyers come after me, I’ll agree that $CLOUDPROVIDER
acts as you specify and that $CLOUDPROVIDER’s actions are completely
reasonable and function as you have described. (I’ve been repeatedly advised
to avoid using company names when discussing ARIN policy).

> Is that address in use per ARIN policy? I don't think it is. Has ARIN
> ever asked Amazon to detail the number of elastic IP addresses that
> are not actually in use when it sought more addresses? Probably not.
> Should they have? Only if there's reason to believe that there are a
> large enough number of such addresses to make a difference. Otherwise
> it's purposeless paperwork.

I think this is a very accurate summary of the current situation, yes.

I also suspect that this situation exists in numerous situations where ARIN
remains blissfully unaware of it even when it would matter. (Not necessarily
with any particular or named $CLOUDPROVIDER, but across all the
organizations that ARIN serves, I’d be surprised if none fit this description).

Owen