Can a customer take IP's with them?

Wed Jun 23 08:01:07 UTC 2004

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Alex Rubenstein wrote:

> Should a customer be allowed to force a carrier to allow them to announce
> non-portable IP space as they see fit to any other carriers of their
> choosing when they are no longer buying service from the original carrier
> [that the space is assigned to]?

>         "NAC shall permit CUSTOMER to continue utilization through any
> carrier or carriers of CUSTOMER's choice of any IP addresses that were
> utilized by, through or on behalf of CUSTOMER under the current agreement
> during the term thereof (the "Prior CUSTOMER Addresses") and shall not
> interfere in any way with the use of the Prior CUSTOMER Addresses,
> including, but not limited to:

I don't even see a time limit mentioned here.  Are they planning to snatch
the IPs away from NAC indefinitely?  Which part of non-portable did they
not understand?

You're paying ARIN a yearly maintenance fee on those IPs.  If you end up
in court, that should be pointed out.  If the ex-customer is no longer
paying you for service, then they have no right to continue to use
your IP space.  If you wanted to be "really nice", you might allow them
some grace period (days, weeks?) in which to renumber into either their
own IP space or their next provider's.  AFAIK, common practice when
switching carriers and renumbering is to have overlapping service with the
old and new providers while you renumber.  At the very least, you should
get an IP rental fee out of them if they want the space indefinitely.

If this case goes badly, it'll have some pretty serious implications wrt
current ARIN policies.  i.e. All address space becomes portable...who pays
the fees if ARIN says it's your space but a customer has "stolen" it from
you in court?.  I suggest you contact ARIN and see if they're aware of any
legal precedents that would be helpful or if they have counsel that might
be helpful to you in upholding ARIN policy in court.

BTW...who's the customer?  I think this is someone most providers would
want to avoid dealing with.

This has also served as an example suggesting that if it's not already in
there, all customer contracts should specifically say that any IP space
assigned by the provider to the customer will be revoked if/when the
customer's service is terminated.  I'll have to see if ours have anything
about that.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis                   |  I route
 Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net                |
_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________