> On Mar 16, 2022, at 15:22 , Fernando Frediani <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi David
>
> If I understand correctly you seem to have a view that there should be a ARIN
> policy to permit IPv4 leasing just because it is a reality and we kind of
> have to accept it in our days. No we don't, and that's for many different
> reasons.
>
Well, of course, you are free to deny reality as much as you want. Many people
do. It’s not particularly helpful in the discussion, however.
> I am used to see people saying the brokers are doing a good thing for the
> community by facilitating the things which in reality is the opposite. It may
> look like a good things, but the real beneficiaries are only them who profit
> from it without much concern of what is fair or not to most organizations
> involved.
>
You are actually mistaken here. I used to think as you do, actually. I was very
resistant to the first “specified transfer” policies because of some of the
reasons you describe. However, what you are failing to recognize is that:
+ Brokers and specified transfers were going to happen with or
without the RIRs. If they happened without the RIRs,
there’d be no accurate record of who was using which address
space and the provenance of addresses would be
very difficult to support or defend.
* Benefit to the community from brokers: (ethical)
brokers are familiar with the rules in the RIRs in which
they operate and can assist their customers in
accurate and compliant registration updates and
aid in keeping the allocation database(s)
accurate.
+ With the economic realities of IPv4 addresses becoming
progressively more and more expensive and the advent
of ISPs with limited IPv4 resources available, it is inevitable
that more and more IP service providers will be
doing one or more of the following:
+ Separate surcharges for IPv4 addresses
+ Expecting customers to supply their own IPv4 addresses
+ Surcharges for IPv4 services
+ IPv4 “installation charges” large enough to cover the
procurement of addresses
* Brokers assist ISPs and customers in many of the above
circumstances.
+ With a variety of organizations holding IPv4 addresses that may
or may not even known they have them and whose
IPv4 resources may vastly exceed their needs, it is (arguably)
desirable to have those addresses be transferred to parties
that have current need for IPv4 addresses.
* Brokers provide a valuable service to the community
identifying and marketing these resources
* Paid transfers provide an incentive for entities to
make more efficient use of the resources they have in order
to monetize the resources they no longer need. Brokers
are frequently able to assist in this process.
+ With the high cost of acquisition, IPv4 addresses have become a
capital intensive part of any network-dependent
business model that must support IPv4. Further, there is some
risk that this capital outlay may be fore a resource
which will abruptly and quickly lose its value and no longer be
needed well before it can be amortized as a capital
expenditure. As such, it may make sense for some entities to
transfer that risk to another organization by using
a lease structure instead of purchasing the addresses outright.
* Brokers that provide IPv4 leasing in an ethical and
policy compliant way provide a valuable service
to these businesses. Yes, their price per address may
eventually be more than it would have cost
them to purchase the addresses, but the same is true of
virtually any rental situation. On the other hand,
that excess helps offset the risk that the lessor is
taking by owning a resource that may or may not remain
valuable and may or may not continue to produce revenue.
> IP Leasing is very different from IP Transfer which I see not problem they
> continue doing it. IP Transfer at least we have some guarantees that the
> directly receiving organization really justify for them and that is a quiet
> important (I would say fundamental) point to look at, because that is fairer
> to everyone involved. What guarantees we have when a IP Leasing is done in
> that sense, that fairness start to lack here.
>
If we set the policies up correctly, we should have the same exact guarantees
on a lease.
If $ISP acquires a /10 through transfer and then issues various
subordinate prefixes to their customer, the only guarantee
you have that $ISP’s customers who receive the addresses really justify
them is that $ISP says so. We generally trust $ISP
to act in good faith.
If $LESSOR acquires a /10 through transfer and then leases various
subordinate prefixes to their customers, we have pretty
much the same guarantee with the additional bit that $CUSTOMER is at
least willing to pay enough for the addresses to $LESSOR
to make the lease make sense. In general, I think it is somewhat safe
to assume that $CUSTOMER is not going to make a
monthly recurring payment to $LESSOR for something they don’t intend to
use. If one’s intent is to deprive the market and
inflate the price, then the risk profile for such a transaction is
vastly more favorable if you purchase rather than lease.
Sure, there could be lessors that don’t get reasonable justification
for allocations from their customers, but there are most
certainly ISPs in that category as well. Either way, you’ve got very
little assurance. A lessor can provide just as much
justification to an RIR for the addresses they will allocate to leases
as an ISP can for addresses they will lease to their
customers. The only difference is a lease with connectivity from the
same company or a lease from a company other than
the one(s) providing connectivity.
> People see the brokers are doing a favor to organizations in general by
> facilitating they get some chunks of IPv4, but that in reality makes the cost
> of IPv4 for both leasing and transfer more and more expensive as it makes
> organization even more dependent from these those crumbs that seem to be
> offered with good intention but in reality it is feeding a system that is
> contrary the interests to most organizations involved.
>
Just as you are free to mount, balance, and rotate your own tires, or, you can
go to a tire store and have them perform that service for a fee, brokers
provide a service for a fee. If you want to obtain addresses in the transfer
market without a broker, you’re still free to do that. Brokers are not driving
the cost of IPv4… The scarcity and difficulty of operating with IPv4 is driving
the cost of IPv4. Brokers are along for the ride providing a service and
collecting a fee for that service. Whether that fee is reasonable or not is
(and should be) entirely in the eye of the customer. Customers are always free
to walk away and find a different supplier or look for their addresses
independently.
> It may sound a cliche but IPv4 is over and organizations must learn how to
> survive with what they have, reinvent themselves and make better used of
> their IPv4 resources, deploy a proper CGNAT, deploy IPv6 either they like it
> or not, etc. If an organization have so little or none and need some minimal
> amount is fine they seek for a Transfer of a minimal amount with the help of
> brokers.
>
I agree. However, the increasing cost of IPv4 is a natural and organic part of
that process and sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that it is not
the economic reality of how the current world works will not help anyone. Not
the community, not organizations that are short on IPv4 resources, and not the
RIRs who are only useful so long as their databases provide a reasonably
accurate reflection of the actual utilization of the address space and who
controls it.
A broker is an LIR just like an ISP. Since ISPs are now charging for addresses
independent of connectivity and bandwidth, it only makes sense that customers
can shop for them separately from different suppliers. Just like you can buy
tires for your car from the dealership or from some other store that sells and
supports tires, IPv4 addresses are moving that way as well. The RIRs can either
recognize this and adapt to it with policies that make sense and preserve some
of the things you’ve outlined as concerns above, or, they can simply deny the
reality of IPv4 leasing and lose track of how addresses are actually managed
for some significant chunks of the internet.
> Encouraging IP Leasing as if it were something normal just "because it exists
> today" is a shot in the foot that in the long term only worsens the existing
> scenario, it feeds a market without much discretion increasing final prices
> for everyone and what is the worst of all, creates even more unfairness for
> everyone who has always submitted to the rules we have until today for
> distributing addresses to those who really have a real justification to keep
> control of that resource that does not belong to them.
>
I don’t believe that a policy that merely allows IPv4 leasing can be said to
encourage it. Rather, it permits it, recognizes that it exists and is not going
to stop existing just because policy pretends it can’t exist.
The market is not likely to be significantly swayed by policy in terms of
pricing, with the exception that AFRINIC has been able to preserve a devalued
price on addresses within their region due to their restrictive lack of a
transfer policy for moving addresses to/from AFRINIC. However, while this has
the effect of keeping AFRINIC IPv4 addresses less expensive on the open market,
it also leads to a significant amount of utilization of those addresses outside
of policy and quite a bit of hoarding of addresses by some of AFRINIC’s largest
members. ARIN’s counsel has advised against naming names here, so I won’t, but
if you want names, contact me off list.
Owen
> Regards
> Fernando
>
> On 16/03/2022 13:09, David Farmer via ARIN-PPML wrote:
>> Yes, bundling IPv4 addresses with bandwidth is permitted, and in the past
>> was common practice, heck even the expected practice. However, the fact that
>> IPv4 address demand isn't decreasing significantly, the costs to acquire new
>> IPv4 addresses are increasing significantly, and with the increasing
>> commoditization of bandwidth, it is no longer economically viable to bundle
>> bandwidth, and its associated connectivity, with IPv4 addressing. This is
>> driving a structural separation of bandwidth, connectivity, and IPv4
>> addressing, from each other, instead of bundling them together as in the
>> past.
>>
>> Let me state that differently; ISPs are being driven, buy cost conscience
>> consumers, to separate the costs of bandwidth and the costs of the IPv4
>> addresses needed to utilize the bandwidth from each other. Minimally this
>> separation is achieved by accounting for the costs on separate line items of
>> a common bill from a single provider. However, price competition for
>> bandwidth and IPv4 addresses separately will inevitably drive a structural
>> separation between the two. Consumers will want the best price they can get
>> for bandwidth and the best price they can get for IPv4 addresses, regardless
>> of whether they come from a single provider or not.
>>
>> Some may argue this is being driven by the existence of address brokers, and
>> their desire to make money, I disagree. While address brokers making money
>> is the grease that keeps this machine working, the need for the machine is
>> driven by; IPv4 free pool exhaustion, the increasing cost of IPv4 addresses,
>> and the lack of adoption of IPv6.
>> In other words, address brokers wouldn't exist if there wasn't a demand for
>> their services.
>>
>> In short, the economic conditions that allowed for and even encouraged the
>> bundling of IPv4 addresses with bandwidth and connectivity no longer exist,
>> that world is gone. While I have not personally yet determined if I support
>> this particular policy text, nevertheless, the time has come to recognize
>> the next step in this inextricable evolution of IPv4 address policy by the
>> ARIN policy community and permit IPv4 leasing.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 5:05 PM John Santos <[email protected]
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> I disagree. The addresses are useless unless they ALSO purchase access and
>> routing from another network operator. How is this cheaper?
>>
>> It is and always has been allowed to lease bundled access of addresses and
>> connectivity from a LIR, without any expense for purchasing those addresses.
>>
>>
>> On 3/11/2022 12:13 PM, Tom Fantacone wrote:
>> > I support the proposal as written.
>> >
>> > It facilitates the provision of a valuable service to a large swath of the
>> > ARIN
>> > community, namely the ability of network operators with an operational
>> > need to
>> > lease IPv4 addresses from 3rd party lessors at a fraction of the cost of
>> > purchasing those addresses. Too often we have seen network operators
>> > justify
>> > their need for IPv4 space only to find that they can't afford to make the
>> > purchase. They end up using CGNAT or some other sub-optimal solution.
>> >
>> > Bill, regarding your point "B", by providing IPv4 leasing, these 3rd
>> > parties are
>> > certainly performing a function that ARIN does not.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ---- On Thu, 10 Mar 2022 17:46:36 -0500 *William Herrin <[email protected]
>> > <mailto:[email protected]>>* wrote ----
>> >
>> > On Wed, Mar 9, 2022 at 8:24 PM ARIN <[email protected]
>> > <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>>
>> > wrote:
>> > > * ARIN-2021-6: Permit IPv4 Leased Addresses for Purposes of
>> > Determining
>> > Utilization for Future Allocations
>> >
>> > I continue to OPPOSE this proposal because:
>> >
>> > A) It asks ARIN to facilitate blatant and unapologetic rent-seeking
>> > behavior with changes to public policy.
>> >
>> > B) It proposes that third parties perform precisely and only the
>> > functions that ARIN itself performs without any credible compliance
>> > mechanism to assure the third party performs to ARIN's standards or in
>> > accordance with the community's established number policy.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Bill Herrin
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > William Herrin
>> > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]
>> > <mailto:[email protected]>>
>> > https://bill.herrin.us/ <https://bill.herrin.us/>
>> > <https://bill.herrin.us/ <https://bill.herrin.us/>>
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > ARIN-PPML
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>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > ARIN-PPML
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>>
>> --
>> John Santos
>> Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
>> 781-861-0670 ext 539
>> _______________________________________________
>> ARIN-PPML
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>>
>> --
>> ===============================================
>> David Farmer Email:[email protected]
>> <mailto:email%[email protected]>
>> Networking & Telecommunication Services
>> Office of Information Technology
>> University of Minnesota
>> 2218 University Ave SE Phone: 612-626-0815
>> Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029 Cell: 612-812-9952
>> ===============================================
>>
>>
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