(UPDATE) Can a Customer take their IP's with them? (Court says yes!)

Wed Jun 30 01:26:04 UTC 2004

Alex Rubenstein wrote:

> What I AM looking for is a commentary from the internet community,
> strictly relating to the fact that a judge has issued a TRO that forces an
> ISP (NAC) to allow a third-party, who WILL NOT be a Customer of NAC, to be
> able to use IP Space allocated to NAC. In other words, I am asking people
> to if they agree with my position, lawsuit or not, that non-portable IP's
> should not be portable between parties, especially by a state superior
> court ordered TRO.

Is that really what you are asking?

> This issue has been misunderstood, in that there is belief by some that
> the Customer should be allowed some period of grace for renumbering. I
> want to remind people that this Customer has had ARIN allocations for over
> 15 months.  Also, recall that Customer has terminated service with us, and
> we would still allow them to be a Customer of ours if they so choose.

So if you are really asking, "lawsuit or not, that non-portable IP's
should not be portable between parties," who terminated service with
who cannot make a difference.

Can anyone think of circumstances where if an ISP were to use "IP
lock-in" as a weapon against customers that an TRO would be in order?
Then your "lawsuit or not" clause would seem to say that there are times
that non-portable IPs should be portable.

Also can one think of other circumstances where non-portable IPs should
become portable without reallocation through ARIN? Say, *poof*, ISP
goes out of business _very_ suddenly with no one buying up its assets
and taking over its operations quickly. There is no way to expect all of
the customers to renumber in time. Do they have to wait for ARIN to
reallocate the defunct ISP's space? And once it does, if the space gets
reallocated to ISP-X, do all of the customers _have to_ sign up with
this ISP to hold onto their numbers for a while? Or do customers have
some time to take the numbers with them to another ISP while things get
ironed out?

Actually, I would expect the latter has happened. What has been done?

Making non-portable numbers portable would be a Bad Thing. But I've
been in the position of IP lock-in too. It's not a good feeling.
The non-portable/portable designation is purely an administrative
boundary. The justice system is all about administrative boundaries.
There is no technical reason it cannot be done.
-- 
Crist J. Clark                               crist.clark at globalstar.com
Globalstar Communications                                (408) 933-4387