IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Tue Feb 19 23:39:00 UTC 2008

John,

On Feb 19, 2008, at 11:40 AM, John Curran wrote:
> I imagine that there are many potential outcomes.  For example,
> in a world where ICANN/IANA (who seems to very much want to
> be in charge of all this)

This is almost amusing given the _mutually_ agreed role for ICANN/IANA  
in address allocation, but I guess we all need our bogeymen.

> actually did IP block revocation of unused
> blocks per RFC2050, we'd likely not be having any discussion of a
> relaxed transfer policy, as a result of the complete lack of need.

To my knowledge, ICANN has neither the ability (given the mutual  
agreements between ICANN and the RIRs) nor the desire to intrude upon  
the RIR's bailiwick in this way.  I find it somewhat surprising that  
after 10 or so years of trying to ensure ICANN didn't get into the  
RIRs business that you're suggesting they do so now (I seem to  
remember someone telling me "IANA should be a black box where the RIRs  
crank the handle and /8s pop out, nothing more").

However, this misses the point.

The people who control the Internet address space are not the RIRs or  
ICANN.  Control is vested in the ISPs who decide what is routed or not  
routed.  In effect, the ISPs have agreed to use the RIRs as a neutral  
meeting point to avoid negotiating a myriad agreements on who has the  
right to announce what.  This only works as long as it is in the best  
interests of most (in particular, the big parties) to play along.  As  
soon as policies begin to impact those best interests negatively, the  
policies will either be modified or ignored.  If they are ignored, the  
vacuum will be filled by someone (whether a private entity or  
governments/ITU isn't clear at this point).

A market already exists.  Whether it is done by buying/selling a  
company for its IP address assets or just simply buying the address  
space outright and paying an ISP to not look at a RIR whois server  
isn't particularly relevant.  As the IPv4 free pool exhausts, that  
market is going to get much bigger, much faster.  It would be nice if  
this market were somehow self-regulated by the industry players  
involved since failing that implies something I suspect none of us  
want. However, the current path appears to be to not do anything until  
it is too late.

Perhaps we could agree that not doing something until it is too late  
would be bad?

> Would the ISP community support adherence to RFC 2050 and
> route accordingly?  It certainly has to date, and nearly every RIR

> policy has been build accordingly.

And IPv4 address space has been essentially free to date. That _is_  
changing as you well know.

> It might result in some legal
> work, but that's a small price to pay to further operational stability
> of the Internet.

As far as I can tell, the best way to ensure instability is for ISPs  
and other address consuming organizations to continue ignoring the  
issue.  Promoting the idea that 2050 is somehow still applicable to  
the post IPv4 free pool world would seem to support that action.  Not  
sure how that helps.

> p.s.  ICANN seems to have no problem with asserting the
>       informal DNS agreements from the same time period
>       (with entire teams of lawyers) so maybe we just need
>       to wait until they're free to pay attention to IP resources?

I'm afraid you're confused.  The informal agreements I presume you're  
referring to are national sovereignty issues and ICANN has essentially  
no role (and certainly no role for ICANN's lawyers).  FWIW, ICANN's  
lawyers are largely consumed in dealing with new, formal, contractual  
agreements. However, continue to make spurious accusations, it  
undoubtedly makes the various parties feel better.

Regards,
-drc