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

David Schwartz davids at webmaster.com
Wed Jun 30 04:22:48 UTC 2004



> 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.

	It is at least my opinion that this is a ludicrous argument. While this
would certainly cause problems if everyone did it and it isn't the norm,
it's ridiculous to argue that there could never exist a situation where this
might not be the best temporary solution to a legitimate dispute between
parties.

	Consider, for example, if I'm a large customer single-homed to one ISP.
They go out of business and can't continue to provide me with service with
four hours notice. They want to return their block to ARIN immediately and
force me to renumber in a day. So you're saying it's unreasonable for a
court to order them to delay the sale for 30 days and allow me to continue
using those IPs through another provider? Why?!

	You can't argue this in the total abstract without the context of the
actual dispute between the parties and the actual effects of allowing or not
allowing this on each party. If you think the judge is out of his mind, then
bluntly, you are out of yours.

	Yes, it would be bad if everyone did this. But if we really believe that IP
addresse are non-portable for purely technical reasons and not as a weapon
to use against customers, then we should be very agreeable to cases where a
customer wants a reasonable time to continue using the IPs. IMO, 99.9% of
the time, they should also be continuing to get service from the provider,
but it would be really silly to say there could never exist an exception.

	DS





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