IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

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21

It's good that this discussion is happening now.
To make the discussion as productive as possible, it's probably a good idea to clarify assumptions and terms.
We all know what "market" means -- but in all likelihood many of the things we all "know" do not overlap, and some are probably mutually contradictory.

If thinking about IPv4 addresses as a "commodity" has any validity, it comes from the assumption that making them subject to "market pricing" will increase supply, i.e., incentive current surplus holders to make that surplus available to would-be buyers.

In other "commodity" markets, the connection between market pricing and increased supply is *production* -- i.e., when the revealed price of a commodity goes up, those who are capable of making it are motivated to make more, or to jump into the market for the first time. In other commodity markets, that motivation is bounded by the threat of alternative suppliers, by the impracticality of hoarding, and by the inability of the potential seller to use more of the commodity directly. In other words, the existence or potential emergence of alternative producers/suppliers tends to discourage hoarding to maximize prices (because there's no guarantee that prices will stay high, much less go even higher), and the lack of direct "use value" reduces any countervailing incentive that the prospective seller to just hold the assets in perpetuity, until they can be used in-house.

In the case of IPv4 addressing, none of these bounding conditions apply. No more IPv4 addresses can be produced, and they're almost certain to have unique (if not irreplaceable) use value, at least for some classes of ISPs that exist today, for at least a decade or more (or as long as those kinds of ISPs exist, whichever is shortest). That means the potential price is always going to be higher tomorrow than it is today, right up to the day before the last day that IPv4 becomes useless. Which means hoarding is going to continue to be the most sensible behavior for all surplus holders -- even those that no longer have any Internet-related ops or business interests.

This countervailing incentive is much stronger for surplus holders that *do* still have such interests. Knowing that IPv4 addresses that they might need in the future will certainly cost more (maybe lots more) than whatever price they could command for surplus IPv4 today, growing ISPs are not likely to contribute much to the salable, "liquid" address pool. Worse still, so long as IPv4 continues to be a non-substitutable, must-have input for certain kinds of ISPs, ISPs like that will know that the threat of competition from existing or hypothetical future competitors will be absolutely limited by the availability of IPv4 address space. For them, making IPv4 address space unavailable to competitors is a perfectly sensible "use", and one with quite a lot of value.

An unmediated market is not going to "work", for almost any meaning of that term. Get over it.

Anyone who disagrees should point out anything disputable in the above, or else clarify what they actually think/hope that an IPv4 address market will achieve.

TV

22

Hmm ... There is a market for brownstone apartments in NYC and also for Cezanne's paintings and farmland ...

There are plenty of markets that function well despite the absence of 'production'.

Not especially illuminating comparisons, but I'm happy to indulge.
If access to address resources is nothing more than an aesthetic or status concern, then brownstones and Cezannes are fine comparisons.
Farmland is a better comparison, but you're wrong to add it to your list. It is constantly being created, and (more frequently) destroyed, e.g., when forested land is cleared, or countryside gets converted to subdivisions.

If you had said "land" itself, that would be been much more apt, at least if you think about what land meant back in the 19th century and earlier, when it was synonymous with self-determination (in both in economic and political sense).

By the way, supply is not production.

Supply how much will be offered for sale.

Excellent observation.
The quantity that can be offered for sale is a subset of the quantity that can be produced.
If the latter is open-ended, so the superset is unbounded, then those capable of offering something for sale tend to take that into account when deciding when and for what price to put what they have on offer. Sell now, or someone else will. Sell now, because there's no reason to assume that your terms will be better later.

Now try that in reverse.

So I am totally unconvinced at this point.

By the way, since markets do not involve compulsion.

Oh I see. If I had realized that libertarian posturing and not actual problem solving was the impetus for this thread, I wouldn't have bothered to chime in.

So why not give it a try?

Because some mistakes can take decades or longer to correct.

23

Steve,

Yah. A market exists today, though it's perforce sub rosa.

An interesting operational question is how to prevent deaggregation as
a result of a market. If, say, a company isn't using half of its
address space, could it sell that half, to several other parties? Can
that be prevented by market means?
  
This is a strong argument for regulation of the market. A regulated market could provide liquidity needed by those who would otherwise find <unregulated> means to accomplish their ends (such as making private deals that are perhaps undetectable). It provides an incentive for people to do the right thing, assuming the cost of doing so is not prohibitive (a big assumption if ever there was one).

Eliot

24

Steve,
> Yah. A market exists today, though it's perforce sub rosa.
>
> An interesting operational question is how to prevent deaggregation
> as a result of a market. If, say, a company isn't using half of its
> address space, could it sell that half, to several other parties?
> Can that be prevented by market means?
>

This is a strong argument for regulation of the market. A regulated
market could provide liquidity needed by those who would otherwise
find <unregulated> means to accomplish their ends (such as making
private deals that are perhaps undetectable).

I have no problem with regulating markets -- I tend to think they work
better that way. (He ducks, fending off the attacks of maddened
libertarians...)

It provides an
incentive for people to do the right thing, assuming the cost of
doing so is not prohibitive (a big assumption if ever there was one).

That's something the market will do very well: balancing the profits
against the cost of renumbering.

    --Steve Bellovin, Steven M. Bellovin

25

Growth is king, also in networking. How can a v4 market meet the demand
of an expanding global network beyond a short-lived gold-rush? A
price-tag may create an incentive to sell, but doesn't create more units
or magically solve other problems (e.g. fragmentation). Many are those
who look forward to a v4 market. Not to invest in in, but because will
be the most powerful catalyst driving the transition to v6.

//per

26

David Conrad wrote:

John,

ARIN (and other RIRs) and the rules of use of IP address were specifically setup to allow global communications around the world with a large number of entities on an equal basis.

More IP addresses were allocated prior to the creation of the RIRs than since. The terms under which those early allocations were made is a bit fuzzy (to put it mildly).

When IANA free pool exhaustion happens or even appears to be imminent, one can expect push for allocation policies to be changed drastically towards the miserly. That will likely affect the value equation even before pool exhaustion.

Furthermore, I expect more credence will be lent to the reclaiming efforts, and pre-RIR swamp space has lots of candidates.

Class-E, rfc3330 and similar reclamation might occur as well.

"effort not worth the return" objections, maybe its true, not under current allocation guidelines and resulting burn rate. Therefore, I would favor not performing reclamations until/unless those are changed.

Consider under new drastically more miserly policies, likely return will be worth the effort, if not right away, then in a bit in the future.

ipv4 experimental space has no reason to exist, experiments should all be ipv6 anyways.

ARIN is attempting to remedy this fuzziness by creating a "legacy RSA" in which you give up some potential rights in exchange for some potential rights (it also asserts ARIN has the right to decide what happens with all the legacy space which causes some concern internationally, but that's not relevant here). See http://www.arin.net/registration/legacy/ index.html for more information.

PS: The RIRs are community driven and so if the community wants to become a market place, they can petition ARIN have a vote and change if the majority of the community wants to.

The question really isn't whether the ARIN community will want a market to exist. A market, albeit black or grey, exists already.

And we should be taking into account the value addresses have in this market as opposed to the "white" market, on an ongoing basis.

The question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free pool exhausts.

I expect the value will skyrocket, whether on the black, grey or white market.

Ignoring the market will likely result in the marginalization of ARIN for services such as registration of address space (for good or ill). Not ignoring the market will likely result in all sorts of 'fun', in the worst case similar to what has occurred in the domain name market.

If there is a market, it makes little sense to ignore it, gonna be all sorts of consequences to doing so.

27

Per Heldal wrote:

Growth is king, also in networking. How can a v4 market meet the demand
of an expanding global network beyond a short-lived gold-rush? A
price-tag may create an incentive to sell, but doesn't create more units
or magically solve other problems (e.g. fragmentation). Many are those
who look forward to a v4 market. Not to invest in in, but because will
be the most powerful catalyst driving the transition to v6.
  
I personally agree with all that you say, but it doesn't mean that a market isn't useful. In particular, can it be useful in a transition from IPv4 to IPv6 to those who are not in a position to easily move from one to the other? They would pay a premium to move based on scarcity already, but if there is no motivation to bring unused blocks into the market, then they won't show up. And that is sufficient motivation for a black market, a market that governments themselves couldn't play a constructive role in (buying OR selling).

Eliot

28

Per,

A price-tag may create an incentive to sell, but doesn't create more units
or magically solve other problems (e.g. fragmentation).

It doesn't create more units, but it does increase the incentive to find ways to be more efficient in use. Does MIT really need a /8? Does InterOp? Does HP need 2 plus a bunch of /16s? Etc. In the extreme, does any reasonably sized organization really _need_ more than a few /32s (which could be allocated out of PA space thereby reducing fragmentation) for their NAT gateway and public facing servers? How many ISPs still allocate from a small set of fixed size block to customers regardless of what the customers actually _need_, simply because that's what their backend systems were written to do?

Many are those
who look forward to a v4 market. Not to invest in in, but because will
be the most powerful catalyst driving the transition to v6.

That's the optimistic view...

Regards,
-drc

29

Joe,

When IANA free pool exhaustion happens or even appears to be imminent, one can expect push for allocation policies to be changed drastically towards the miserly.

No.

You might see a push towards this, but it will take far longer to get policies modified than there will be time left and there will be increased 'competition' among the RIRs that will strongly discourage this course of action (as someone who has proposed a policy that would impose more restrictions on v4 allocations, I have already heard the "if we modify our policies to be more conservative, then the folks in other RIRs will get an advantage" several times).

The RIR bureaucracy is a ponderous ship that turns very slowly and has multiple captains who do not necessarily agree on the direction to turn. IPv4 allocation policy revisions aren't going to save us.

Furthermore, I expect more credence will be lent to the reclaiming efforts, and pre-RIR swamp space has lots of candidates.

What incentive to a holder of early allocations is there to return address space voluntarily?

Class-E,

Efforts to redefine class E have stalled because there is simply no way it can be used for anything other than private space. There are too many implementations out there that will never be modified (e.g., Windows 98) on which you can't even configure class E space.

rfc3330 and similar reclamation might occur as well.

IANA recently reclaimed 14/8. I think that added 3 _weeks_ to the expected runout date. That was likely the last "easily" reclaimable block.

The question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free pool exhausts.

I expect the value will skyrocket, whether on the black, grey or white market.

Yep. And the question is: as an ISP or other address consuming organization, what will you do when the cost of obtaining IPv4 addresses skyrockets? So far, as far as I can tell, the answer to that question (in most cases) has been putting hands over ears and saying "La la la" loudly. See <http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/020608-ipv4-address-depletion.html >.

Regards,
-drc

30

Steve,

31

David Conrad wrote:

Joe,

When IANA free pool exhaustion happens or even appears to be imminent, one can expect push for allocation policies to be changed drastically towards the miserly.

No.

You might see a push towards this, but it will take far longer to get policies modified than there will be time left and there will be increased 'competition' among the RIRs that will strongly discourage this course of action (as someone who has proposed a policy that would impose more restrictions on v4 allocations, I have already heard the "if we modify our policies to be more conservative, then the folks in other RIRs will get an advantage" several times).

Things might get different when the end is staring us in the face.

The RIR bureaucracy is a ponderous ship that turns very slowly and has multiple captains who do not necessarily agree on the direction to turn. IPv4 allocation policy revisions aren't going to save us.

RIR's have bylaws about emergency policies, dont they?

Its not about saving, its about prolonging the end and how long that migh be expected to last.

Furthermore, I expect more credence will be lent to the reclaiming efforts, and pre-RIR swamp space has lots of candidates.

What incentive to a holder of early allocations is there to return address space voluntarily?

None, but the nice thing about being a registry is that reclaiming things is as simple as allocating it to somebody else. Buyer beware and all that.

And in the absence of any other method of obtaining ipv4, I would expect RIR mebership to push for aggressive reclamation, with policy change to make it worthwhile.

Class-E,

Efforts to redefine class E have stalled because there is simply no way it can be used for anything other than private space.

Amazing that so much effort can go into ipv6 but nobody can spare a few hours per product to remove a couple lines of code?

There are too many implementations out there that will never be modified (e.g., Windows 98) on which you can't even configure class E space.

Faced with a choice of ipv6 and no ipv4 or ipv6 and class-e ipv4, which would you choose? Not like windows98 (if there are any still around that mean anything to anybody) has ipv6 either.

rfc3330 and similar reclamation might occur as well.

IANA recently reclaimed 14/8. I think that added 3 _weeks_ to the expected runout date. That was likely the last "easily" reclaimable block.

Reclamation efforts without policy change isnt profitable and would only become so if miser mode is in effect.

The question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free pool exhausts.

I expect the value will skyrocket, whether on the black, grey or white market.

Yep. And the question is: as an ISP or other address consuming organization, what will you do when the cost of obtaining IPv4 addresses skyrockets?

Pass it on to the customer. Reclaim. Scavenge. Engineer more nats and workarounds while accelerating ipv6. Get budget and manpower to actually make changes. Drag the users kicking and screaming, cause thats what it will take.

So far, as far as I can tell, the answer to that question (in most cases) has been putting hands over ears and saying "La la la" loudly. See <http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/020608-ipv4-address-depletion.html >.

Things will likely be different in 2010

32

David Conrad wrote:

Joe,

When IANA free pool exhaustion happens or even appears to be imminent, one can expect push for allocation policies to be changed drastically towards the miserly.

No.
You might see a push towards this, but it will take far longer to get policies modified than there will be time left and there will be increased 'competition' among the RIRs that will strongly discourage this course of action (as someone who has proposed a policy that would impose more restrictions on v4 allocations, I have already heard the "if we modify our policies to be more conservative, then the folks in other RIRs will get an advantage" several times).

Things might get different when the end is staring us in the face.

By then, the policy process will take too long to be meaningful.

The RIR bureaucracy is a ponderous ship that turns very slowly and has multiple captains who do not necessarily agree on the direction to turn. IPv4 allocation policy revisions aren't going to save us.

RIR's have bylaws about emergency policies, dont they?

Yes, but, I think it is unlikely, at least in ARIN's case that the BoT will consider runout an emergency.

Its not about saving, its about prolonging the end and how long that migh be expected to last.

Prolonging the end in terms of tightening requirements is just a question of deciding who to fail
to serve. Do you fail to serve those who came first, or, do you punish those who come first and
serve only those who meet some other arbitrary criteria? What arbitrary criteria would you
suggest be used to decide who should not receive service?

Furthermore, I expect more credence will be lent to the reclaiming efforts, and pre-RIR swamp space has lots of candidates.

What incentive to a holder of early allocations is there to return address space voluntarily?

None, but the nice thing about being a registry is that reclaiming things is as simple as allocating it to somebody else. Buyer beware and all that.

This would create significant legal challenges and costs. Likely, the legacy holders would prevail
in many cases, and, you just might find that becomes the excuse that congress needs to hand over
management of the IP space to the ITU. I don't see that as a good scenario at all. By the time the
legal challenges were resolved, the ISPs receiving such allocations would be long-since out of
business due to the inability to provide reliable service to their customers.

And in the absence of any other method of obtaining ipv4, I would expect RIR mebership to push for aggressive reclamation, with policy change to make it worthwhile.

The RIR membership doesn't necessarily have standing to do much about legacy holders other
than what the legacy holders themselves choose to agree to. You are assuming that the RIR
has power that is, as yet, untested, unproven, and, unlikely.

Class-E,

Efforts to redefine class E have stalled because there is simply no way it can be used for anything other than private space.

Amazing that so much effort can go into ipv6 but nobody can spare a few hours per product to remove a couple lines of code?

Different entities and a belief that IPv6 is the correct solution on the part of those in a position
to do so. Class E would actually not buy very much time, either.

There are too many implementations out there that will never be modified (e.g., Windows 98) on which you can't even configure class E space.

Faced with a choice of ipv6 and no ipv4 or ipv6 and class-e ipv4, which would you choose? Not like windows98 (if there are any still around that mean anything to anybody) has ipv6 either.

True. So, this will probably create the mandate for W98 to go away. I don't see this as a bad thing.
As it stands now, anyone who wants can try and use class-e IPv4. However, I don't expect any RIR
to be handing it out with guaranteed uniqueness any time soon.

rfc3330 and similar reclamation might occur as well.

IANA recently reclaimed 14/8. I think that added 3 _weeks_ to the expected runout date. That was likely the last "easily" reclaimable block.

Reclamation efforts without policy change isnt profitable and would only become so if miser mode is in effect.

I haven't seen you propose a policy change that would affect this. While you're too late for the Denver meeting,
you are welcome to submit a policy to ARIN if you think policy can resolve this.

The question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free pool exhausts.

I expect the value will skyrocket, whether on the black, grey or white market.

Yep. And the question is: as an ISP or other address consuming organization, what will you do when the cost of obtaining IPv4 addresses skyrockets?

Pass it on to the customer. Reclaim. Scavenge. Engineer more nats and workarounds while accelerating ipv6. Get budget and manpower to actually make changes. Drag the users kicking and screaming, cause thats what it will take.

Yep... All of these will probably occur.

So far, as far as I can tell, the answer to that question (in most cases) has been putting hands over ears and saying "La la la" loudly. See <http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/020608-ipv4-address-depletion.html >.

Things will likely be different in 2010

True. The question is not whether things will change, but, how they will change. This is a much harder
question. For now, all that we know is that few people are paying attention to the problem, and, that the
problem will get progressively harder to solve the longer that behavior persists.

Owen

33

No incentive at all, unless they don't need them anymore. In that
case, RFC2050 applies (which you and Kim and Mark and Daniel and
Jon Postel coauthored, right?):

"IP addresses are valid as long as the criteria continues to be met.
The IANA reserves the right to invalidate any IP assignments once it
is determined the the requirement for the address space no longer
exists. In the event of address invalidation, reasonable efforts
will be made by the appropriate registry to inform the organization
that the addresses have been returned to the free pool of IPv4
address space."

I understand that quite a few allocations were made prior to RFC
2050, but they certainly don't predates Jon's involvement as the
IANA or the original collaborative spirit of the Internet community.
To be clear, many of those who received early allocations are
making use of them in some manner, and I haven't seen in any
policies or proposals any suggestion that organizations actually
using addresses shouldn't keep on using them. The discussion
has been on why most of those who haven't been making use
of their early assignments haven't actually returned them to the
free pool (we've had some successes over the last ten years,
including the recent address returns that Leo discusses here:
http://blog.icann.org/?p=271) but these add up to a very small
percentage of the potentially unused space in the early allocations.

What we now face is the simply reality of whether enabling a
financial incentive for those who don't adhere to the community
spirit incentive is overall worthwhile for the Internet. Some will
say this has certain unsavory aspects to it (such as discouraging
altruistic return of address space) but that shouldn't preclude it
from being considered at all.

/John

34

What incentive to a holder of early allocations is there to
return address space voluntarily?

Zero.

In fact there is a disincentive since it costs money to return
address space. Most of these organizations will not have central
control and management of IPv4 addresses with an automated
system that can clearly and confidently report what addresses
are not needed. Only ISPs implement systems like this and not
all of them do so. Most organizations have pieced together
spreadsheets, scripts, network discovery tools and departmental
IP address management systems to do the job. The effort required
to just get a clear and trustable report of which addresses are
surplus will cost a considerable amount of money.

This all comes at a time when the same resources (cash and people's
time) should be working on planning how and where to deploy IPv6
within the organization for the greatest benefit and least disruption.
The potential losses risked by a company for not being able to
deploy IPv6 when and where they need it, are far greater than the
potential benefits of selling a few IP address blocks. Even if you
are talking about figures of $500,000 dollars for a /16 block, you
still have to deduct the cost of figuring out that this /16 can be
released without harming the organization's network. There might
not be much profit left.

This whole issue (IPv4 depletion) is likely to be written up in
one or more B-school cases because this is classic MBA territory.
There are no right answers. There is no solution to the problem.
There are only courses of action which carry less risk and lead
to more profitable outcomes. In my opinion, none of those courses
of action includes participation in an IPv4 address market.

Efforts to redefine class E have stalled because there is
simply no way it can be used for anything other than private
space. There are too many implementations out there that
will never be modified (e.g., Windows 98) on which you can't
even configure class E space.

Class E could have been used if we had started a year ago. But now
it is simply to late to do anything about it. The window of opportunity
has passed. I'd still support moving Class E space to being ordinary
unicast IPv4 space because it makes no sense to keep it special, but
I don't believe that anyone will be able to use these addresses until
well after we are into the mixed IPv6/IPv4 Internet phase.

IANA recently reclaimed 14/8. I think that added 3 _weeks_
to the expected runout date. That was likely the last
"easily" reclaimable block.

Easily!? I'm not so sure that is a correct description of the process.
Perhaps Leo Vegoda could comment on this point since he had more
first hand involvement than I did.

--Michael Dillon

35

[...]

Easily!? I'm not so sure that is a correct description of the process.
Perhaps Leo Vegoda could comment on this point since he had more
first hand involvement than I did.

On the whole, these assignments were for one or two /32s. They were unlikely
to be useful for anything else. The one network that renumbered didn't have
a problem finding a couple of spare /32s from their RIR space.

I think I would have seen significantly more difficulties if the assignments
had mostly been used or been for /24 or shorter prefixes.

The difficulty I experienced in reclaiming 14/8 was finding out who to
contact. Once I'd found someone who knew about the addresses there wasn't
really any resistance to returning them.

That being said, the process took about a year of calendar time, which is
more than I had expected. I have been looking at other /8s for about the
same time with less success.

Regards,

Leo

36

John,

What we now face is the simply reality of whether enabling a
financial incentive for those who don't adhere to the community
spirit incentive is overall worthwhile for the Internet.

Not really.

I figure "community spirit" as a significant motivator died long, long ago and even if it did continue to exist, it certainly wouldn't survive the upcoming free-for-all in two or three years.

The simple reality is that businesses who require IPv4 addresses to continue operations will do what is necessary to obtain them, regardless of what an informational document published over a decade ago or informal agreements with individuals sadly passed away might say. ARIN and the other RIRs can continue to try to ignore that reality, but the almost certain end state of that action is to make ARIN and the other RIRs irrelevant in IPv4 registration management (who would be relevant is left to the reader as an exercise).

Some will
say this has certain unsavory aspects to it (such as discouraging
altruistic return of address space) but that shouldn't preclude it
from being considered at all.

The question really isn't whether or not financial incentives should be considered. They already are (as you well know). The question really should be how (or even if) the existing policy bodies can impose some form of self-regulation to keep the inevitable market behavior from completely running amok. Quoting sections of 2050 written when the Internet was quite different and free IPv4 space was plentiful, particularly given subsequent agreements between ICANN and the RIRs removed IANA from any significant address management role, is merely wasting time.

Regards,
-drc

37

Owen DeLong wrote:

This would create significant legal challenges and costs.

I dont understand how they could prevail. Suppose I decided to tell people that as far as I was concerned this 32 bit number up to that 32bit number would be available for their use in whatever manner they wanted, like printing them on t-shirts, and that they would have the privilege of paying me for the guarantee that I would do so uniquely.

Barring a prior agreement, what grounds does any third party have to object?

For that matter, aside from consensus and inertia, what would stop the operator community as a whole from setting up shop with a "forked" registry that had no contractual agreements with anybody prior?

38

Owen DeLong wrote:

This would create significant legal challenges and costs.

I dont understand how they could prevail. Suppose I decided to tell people that as far as I was concerned this 32 bit number up to that 32bit number would be available for their use in whatever manner they wanted, like printing them on t-shirts, and that they would have the privilege of paying me for the guarantee that I would do so uniquely.

Barring a prior agreement, what grounds does any third party have to object?

The argument could be made that some form of prior agreement exists that the
legacy holders have already received that assignment under those terms and that the
RIRs have accepted a burden to preserve that.

Thus, your "Barring a prior agreement" condition is not met.

For that matter, aside from consensus and inertia, what would stop the operator community as a whole from setting up shop with a "forked" registry that had no contractual agreements with anybody prior?

Nothing. However, do you really think that is viable?
  1. Consensus would be very hard to achieve.
  2. Identifying a single entity to manage such a "forked" registry vs. a bunch
    of islands of registration would be even harder.
  3. Much breakage and instability would likely result.
  4. Do you have any illusion that this would do anything other than beg
    government(s) to try and get involved in regulating address space?

Owen

39

David -

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) 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.

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. It might result in some legal
work, but that's a small price to pay to further operational stability
of the Internet.

/John

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?
       Will that be soon?

40

Owen DeLong wrote:

Barring a prior agreement, what grounds does any third party have to object?

The argument could be made that some form of prior agreement exists that the
legacy holders have already received that assignment under those terms and that the
RIRs have accepted a burden to preserve that.

Well I suppose that would be an interesting question that would depend on examining a whole bunch of agreements that may or may not exist and that may or may not have any legal ramification in some jurisidiction or another and that may or may not apply to successors in interest who may or may not actually be successors in interest.

Legally speaking, if the registries voluntaried disbanded, thus requiring a new unencumbered entity to rise from the ashes, how could any prior agreement be considered binding?

Thus, your "Barring a prior agreement" condition is not met.

For that matter, aside from consensus and inertia, what would stop the operator community as a whole from setting up shop with a "forked" registry that had no contractual agreements with anybody prior?

Nothing. However, do you really think that is viable?
    1. Consensus would be very hard to achieve.

If the current registries are not fulfilling the needs and have become irrelevant, consensus for forking becomes more likely.

The only technical lockin I can spot is reverse dns.

    2. Identifying a single entity to manage such a "forked" registry vs. a bunch
        of islands of registration would be even harder.

All such islands would have a vested interest to work together, and thus, they might actually do so, just like all internet network islands do so today.

    3. Much breakage and instability would likely result.

Likely not, since any registry wishing to be successfull would be trying their best not to break anything, in other words, RIR allocations would likely be honored/duplicated, but swamp would become fair game.

    4. Do you have any illusion that this would do anything other than beg
        government(s) to try and get involved in regulating address space?

If there is a breakdown in supply, than there will be an opportunity for an entity to step forward, if they can promise supply.

If iana free pool runs out and registries cant offer any new ones, whos to say goverments wont start stepping in and "eminent domain"ing address space and setting up registry shop themselves?

Consensus is still required. Otherwise its just a national private network, with or without nat.

I think the takeaway is that the registries better remain relevant to ipv4 so long as ipv4 is relevant.