Lightly used IP addresses

Fri Aug 13 19:24:45 UTC 2010

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 03:17:50PM -0400, John Curran said:
  >Ken - 
  > 
  >  ARIN maintains the WHOIS based on what the community develops for 
  >  policies; what's happens in routing tables is entirely up to the 
  >  ISP community.  No "bleating" or "large sticks" here, just turning
  >  the policy crank and managing address space accordingly.  
  >
  >  ARIN pulls the address space, and then (after holddown) reissues it
  >  to another provider. WHOIS reflects this change, as does in-addr.  
  >  Whether an ISP respect the information in WHOIS is likely to always
  >  be a "local decision"; ARIN's responsibility is to make sure that
  >  the information contained therein matches the community's policy
  >  not some hypothetical routing enforcement.
  >
  >  There will be an ISP attempting to make use of that reassigned 
  >  address space, and one could imagine that party being let down 
  >  if the community says one thing in policy but does another when
  >  it comes to routing.
  >
  >/John
  >
  >John Curran
  >President and CEO
  >ARIN

Thanks John - I realise this.

I was merely putting on the hat of those who may try to bend the policies to
their advantage through delinquent activity. The common good is at stake here,
and I'd rather that ARIN did have some collective 'stick' to effectively apply
itself or via its members. I too don't want to deal with announcements for
the same prefix from multiple warring AS's or other side effects of the IPv4
crunch.

I'm indicating (the probably obvious) that these pressures will certainly
increase over time, and as one other member pointed out, the sticks may become
neccessary - and the community will have to become more 'constitutionally
ethical' in their handling of delinquents on ARIN's/the commmunity's behalf.

Not sure what incentives are in play to encourage this, as it will become necessary
in a shorter time than we may think.

Thanks for your reply and clarifications.

/kc
-- 
Ken Chase - ken at heavycomputing.ca - +1 416 897 6284 - Toronto CANADA
Heavy Computing - Clued bandwidth, colocation and managed linux VPS @151 Front St. W.