Post-Exhaustion-phase "punishment" for early adopters

Daniel Seagraves dseagrav at humancapitaldev.com
Fri Feb 4 22:28:48 UTC 2011


On Feb 4, 2011, at 3:51 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> I'm a little confused.  Sounds like the things you are talking about all fall into the "if you are using your block" category, so he shouldn't worry.
> 
> ARIN should not reclaim a block that is in use.  Unless I am confused?  (Happens a lot, especially as I get older.)

How many addresses do I have to be using for it to count as in use? How high will that number go in the next few months/years?

We have a very old /24 direct allocation from the stone age, when we were a dialup ISP. The company still exists, we just aren't providing dialup service anymore. We still have a couple of our web-hosting customers, but for the most part we've moved on to running an unrelated web-based service. Having our own address space is nice because it means we don't have to worry about stepping on anyone's AUP, we can go multi-homed later as the usage goes up, and we don't have to worry about running out of space as the web service grows. The problem is that while we met the eligibility requirements for an ipv4 direct allocation back when we got it, the requirements have changed over time and we no longer meet the eligibility requirements for an ipv4 direct allocation. (We've shrunk quite a bit) As demand for the remaining ipv4 addresses goes up, ARIN might decide that since we're ineligible for an allocation under the current rules, we're no longer eligible to maintain the space we have, and take it away from us. 

As the remaining space gets smaller, I expect that the number needed to justify keeping my addresses is going to go up. I fear I'm already on thin ice.





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