[address-policy-wg] 2007-08 review phase comments

> You're not proposing much of an alternative here, other than 
> hoping that things are just going to sort-of carry on the way 
> they always have.  It would be nice to believe that this was 
> going to happen, but personally, I don't view this as a 
> realistic potential future.

I don't think anybody believes that things are always going to be
the same. The point that I think ETNO is trying to stress is that
RIPE should be careful to not extend its scope into areas that
are normally the responsibility of government regulators and
this includes market regulators. I think that we all want RIPE
to continue the process of industry self regulation in IP addressing
because the IPv4 shortage is just a temporary problem that will
go away when IPv6 is widely deployed. Rather than focus on a shortage
problem which RIPE can *NOT* solve, we should focus on other issues
where RIPE is a valuable forum. 

> ETNO is correct in identifying that a market based addressing 
> approach will attract lots of attention from forces which are 
> - to be frank - unwanted and largely unhelpful.  However, it 
> must also be realised that an IP address market already 
> exists where you can buy and sell IPv4 address space.  And in 
> a world where there is no longer a free supply of nearly 
> zero-cost address space, this market will take off at high 
> speed, regardless of whether or not the RIRs choose to engage in it.

This proposal enables the sale of IP addresses as property, 
even though it keeps the financial details secret. This 
legitimizes the position that IP addresses, and phone numbers
are assests which can be bought and sold. But the policy as written
places restrictions on the market which cannot be justified. In
the first place, if IP addresses are an asset, then RIPE has no
authority
to say who can buy or sell these assets. Such restrictions can only 
be made by governments, and RIPE does not have that authority. 
I would rather see RIPE reject such proposals because it reinforces 
the message that IP addresses are not property which can be 
bought and sold.

> Chaos is the most likely outcome if they are not given 
> a mandate to be involved; RIRs will not have the community 
> mandate to ensure that their databases of address holders 
> continue to correspond with the ultimate users of the address 
> space.

The only way that this chaotic situation could come to pass would
be if many ISPs of a significant size, started to buy and sell
IP addresses. ETNO contains many of the largest ISPs in Europe
and they say that they will not do this. In addition, we are
entering a period of IPv4 address shortage which means that most
ISPs of any size will not have any IP addresses to sell unless
they can get a price significantly above what they can earn by
using the IP addresses to sell services. These are very real
forces and they serve to limit chaos. I would prefer for RIPE
to wait and see if there is increasing evidence of descent into
chaos before taking actions like 2007-08.

> Unless the RIRs are allowed 
> to adapt to the de-facto methods of managing address space, 
> they will become an irrelevant part of ipv4 address 
> management, 

Adaptation is good, just not in the directions defined by 
2007-08. For instance, 2007-08 allows the addresses to be
transferred without disclosure of any of the details of the
transaction, for instance price paid. This lack of transparency
would lead to addressing cartels and is not consistent with
the principles of OPEN self regulation.

> I don't think that there are very many people who really want 
> an address space market; however, given the circumstances, it 
> would seem to me and many others that it is the least bad of 
> a small number of problematic ways of dealing with a severe 
> constriction of IPv4 address space supply.

Seems to me that the least bad way is to deploy IPv6. There are
at least two or three years left to do this, and it does not require
replacing very much infrastructure. No need to panic.

--Michael Dillon