IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Mon Feb 18 18:52:19 UTC 2008

John,

On Feb 18, 2008, at 9:48 AM, John Lee wrote:
> ARIN (and other RIRs)  and the rules of use of IP address were  
> specifically setup to allow global communications around the world  
> with a large number of entities on an equal basis.

More IP addresses were allocated prior to the creation of the RIRs  
than since.  The terms under which those early allocations were made  
is a bit fuzzy (to put it mildly).  ARIN is attempting to remedy this  
fuzziness by creating a "legacy RSA" in which you give up some  
potential rights in exchange for some potential rights (it also  
asserts ARIN has the right to decide what happens with all the legacy  
space which causes some concern internationally, but that's not  
relevant here).  See http://www.arin.net/registration/legacy/ 
index.html for more information.

> PS: The RIRs are community driven and so if the community wants to  
> become a market place, they can petition ARIN have a vote and change  
> if the majority of the community wants to.

The question really isn't whether the ARIN community will want a  
market to exist.  A market, albeit black or grey, exists already.  The  
question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free  
pool exhausts.  Ignoring the market will likely result in the  
marginalization of ARIN for services such as registration of address  
space (for good or ill).  Not ignoring the market will likely result  
in all sorts of 'fun', in the worst case similar to what has occurred  
in the domain name market.

"Choose wisely."

Regards,
-drc