Advantages and disadvantages of legacy assets

Tue Nov 21 09:38:17 UTC 2023

On Mon, Nov 20, 2023 at 10:59 AM Eric Dugas via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
> Let's say you inherit legacy assets (ASN & IPv4 netblock), what are the first advantages that come to mind (beside not having to pay annual fees).
>
> Any disadvantages? The ones I can think of is the lack of RIR routing security services (in the ARIN region at least). No IRR, no RPKI at all.

Hi Eric,

Disadvantages: Expensive IRR. No RPKI. No vote in ARIN elections. No
legal clarity regarding the status of your resources.

Advantages: Free. No legal clarity regarding the status of your resources.

I listed legal clarity as both an advantage and disadvantage.

When you sign the ARIN registration services agreement (RSA) you get
legal clarity: you are bound by the Number Resource Policy Manual
(NRPM) which is subject to change with the approval of the ARIN Board
of Trustees which usually follows but is not required to follow a
fungible community consensus process. Don't like a change? Too bad.
You can deal with it or you can cancel your ARIN contract. If you
cancel your contract ARIN reclaims the IP addresses and you have no
legal recourse whatsoever.

Not that ARIN would ever behave badly. They're good people who
earnestly endeavor to do right by the community. But if that changes
tomorrow, you'll have no recourse.

Skip signing and you have whatever common law rights you have to the
IP addresses. Whatever those are. When InterNIC, acting as an agent of
the U.S. Government, granted the addresses decades ago, they didn't
spend a lot of (or really any) words on the question of legal rights.
It hasn't been well tested in court. ARIN claims that the NRPM applies
to you anyway, but as a matter of history no provision of the NRPM has
ever been adversely applied to the legitimate holder of a then-legacy
resource. Not even once. The legal foundation for a claim that it can
be is weak at best. The legal risk to ARIN, should it ever attempt to
do so, is not trivial.

In a nutshell, you can either have a lack of clarity as to your rights
or you can clearly have no rights.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin
bill at herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/