IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Tue Feb 19 20:54:04 UTC 2008

On Feb 19, 2008, at 11:51 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:

>
>
> Owen DeLong wrote:
>
>
>>> Barring a prior agreement, what grounds does any third party have  
>>> to  object?
>>>
>> The argument could  be made that some form of prior agreement  
>> exists  that the
>> legacy holders have already received that assignment under those  
>> terms  and that the
>> RIRs have accepted a burden to preserve that.
>
> Well I suppose that would be an interesting question that would  
> depend on examining a whole bunch of agreements that may or may not  
> exist and that may or may not have any legal ramification in some  
> jurisidiction or another and that may or may not apply to successors  
> in interest who may or may not actually be successors in interest.
>
> Legally speaking, if the registries voluntaried disbanded, thus  
> requiring a new unencumbered entity to rise from the ashes, how  
> could any prior agreement be considered binding?
>
You'd probably need to disband the following entities without  
successor arrangements
in order to accomplish this:
	1.	The RIRs
	2.	IANA/ICANN
	3.	USDoC

The third is extremely unlikely.
The second is unlikely.
The first is very unlikely.

At a certain point, the courts will apply the reasonable and prudent  
test to the question and likely determine
that someone who received an assignment from SRI-NIC or NSI-NIC had a  
reasonable expectation to be
able to use that address space in perpetuity and that whatever  
registry had reasonable duty not to duplicate
said assignment. Very likely any ISP routing the assignment to the new  
holder would be part of the lawsuit
and would get enjoined from doing so.

>> Thus, your "Barring a prior agreement" condition is not met.
>>> For that matter, aside from consensus and inertia, what would  
>>> stop  the operator community as a whole from setting up shop with  
>>> a  "forked" registry that had no contractual agreements with  
>>> anybody  prior?
>> Nothing.  However, do you really think that is viable?
>>    1.    Consensus would be very hard to achieve.
>
> If the current registries are not fulfilling the needs and have  
> become irrelevant, consensus for forking becomes more likely.
>
I think it is unlikely that the current registries will become less  
relevant that alternative registries.

> The only technical lockin I can spot is reverse dns.
>
That's substantial, but, having multiple registries competing to  
assign the same addresses in
an uncoordinated manner is not likely to be a useful or successful  
model in any case.

>>    2.    Identifying a single entity to manage such a "forked"  
>> registry vs.  a bunch
>>        of islands of registration would be even harder.
>
> All such islands would have a vested interest to work together, and  
> thus, they might actually do so, just like all internet network  
> islands do so today.
>
How do you see this working?  Who would determine which addresses went  
to which islands for
assignment/allocation?

>>    3.    Much breakage and instability would likely result.
>
> Likely not, since any registry wishing to be successfull would be  
> trying their best not to break anything, in other words, RIR  
> allocations would likely be honored/duplicated, but swamp would  
> become fair game.
>
You still haven't explained who would have the authority to divide up  
the swamp between the
competing organizations, all of whom would likely claim full control  
of the entire swamp, but,
certainly there would be overlapping conflicts.

>>    4.    Do you have any illusion that this would do anything other  
>> than beg
>>        government(s) to try and get involved in regulating address  
>> space?
>
> If there is a breakdown in supply, than there will be an opportunity  
> for an entity to step forward, if they can promise supply.
>
Promising supply is an act of fiction.

> If iana free pool runs out and registries cant offer any new ones,  
> whos to say goverments wont start stepping in and "eminent  
> domain"ing address space and setting up registry shop themselves?
>
Could be interesting, indeed.

> Consensus is still required. Otherwise its just a national private  
> network, with or without nat.
>
Yep.

> I think the takeaway is that the registries better remain relevant  
> to ipv4 so long as ipv4 is relevant.
>
I agree that is the ideal outcome.  The bigger question is how best to  
achieve this.

Owen