IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Wed Feb 20 02:19:59 UTC 2008

David Conrad wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>
Agree with David.

If it isn't the structural change proposal (scrap the original 
constituencies for contractual and non-contractual, with subdivisions 
within contractual for type of contract, and within non-contractual for 
type of non-contractual), then no one who cares about the balance of 
power within the GNSO will give it a moment's thought. If it isn't IDN 
(more personal caveats than most), then no one who cares about ICANN's 
next couple of years will give it a moment's thought.

So, no. As fun as the v4 pool looks to be, the g-side, the cc-side, and 
the more-bits-than-7-side have wicked bigger fish to fry.

Have fun,
Eric