Kremen's Buddy?

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

"Chris Jester, the owner of hosting service provider Split Infinity, has been working with Kremen in trying to locate Cohen, whom Jester says is currently in Tijuana."
http://www.avnonline.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Web_Exclusive_News&Action=Print_Article&Content_ID=242417

---in case anyone has not googled mr. chris jester, please realize he is a buddy of gary kremen and is just looking to stir up dirt. IANAL, and neither are 99.9% of the rest of us here, so let's leave this to the lawyers and get back to discussing something like network operations.

Michele

2

"Chris Jester, the owner of hosting service provider Split Infinity, has
been working with Kremen in trying to locate Cohen, whom Jester says is
currently in Tijuana."
http://www.avnonline.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Web_Exclusive_News&Action=Print_Article&Content_ID=242417

---in case anyone has not googled mr. chris jester, please realize he is a
buddy of gary kremen and is just looking to stir up dirt. IANAL, and
neither
are 99.9% of the rest of us here, so let's leave this to the lawyers and
get
back to discussing something like network operations.

Michele

Michele,

While it would seem I "agree" with Kremens lawsuit, the pure intention
of my posting to nanog is to gain insight into how "things work" so that
I may personally gain a better understanding into the innards of the
IP processing system for assignments and likewise.

I *do* know Kremen, and I need to state that me knowing him and agreeing
with him are two different things entirely. I am not involved in the
ARIN BS in any way. I saw his filing against ARIN and found it interesting.
I have noted negative points of the IP request process however I also know
that ARIN ended up taking good care of me personally, so I dont have much
personal issues at this time. It was a difficult process with lots of
paperwork, and in the end, I got what I requested.

Now that I have said that, let me make it clear, that I have no
established pre-determined opinion of ARIN however the suit Kremen filed
brought up
some serious questions that I wanted to get lots of feedback on because
to me it seems that when a business is tied to IP's they should somehow be
able to insure that no ill-fate can come to those ip's.

Something came up, that I want to share as well....

Once this subject took off on nanog, I have been oversaturated with people
trying to "sell" me ip space. I have had offers for several /16's for
10,000.00 each that are no longer in use by the companies who "own" lol
them. I want to say to those people that made those offers to me....

I do not wish to obtain IP space from the grey-market, the only IP space I
ever need, I do ask ARIN for and will continue to do so. I appreciate the
friendly offers, however the fact is, I have my own IP space assigned to me
by ARIN already. So, bascially, thank you but no.

Kremens filing just entered my mind and had me thinking about it, and how
valid it is. It surely sparked some interest here hasn't it? So then it
was worth discussing, IMHO.

Should anyone wish to talk, my AIM is below.

Cheers.

Chris Jester
Suavemente, INC.
619-227-8845

AIM: NJesterIII
ICQ: 64791506

3

Once this subject took off on nanog, I have been oversaturated with people
trying to "sell" me ip space. I have had offers for several /16's for
10,000.00 each that are no longer in use by the companies who "own" lol
them. I want to say to those people that made those offers to me....

Here is a very good point of why ip space should not be a property traded
on an open market. To me ip space is like a house number or a telephone
number. A resource required and useable for a presence on the global
internet only. The current process of allocating ip space based on need
makes perfect sense. In order to assess the need, certain aspects of a
network have to be disclosed to ARIN, that makes perfect sense as well.

I'd hate to see an open market place for ip space. The ability to afford
ip space based on wealth rather then technical merit makes little sense
to me.

For those who feel ARIN policy is too restrictive and obtaining PI space
it too difficult, perhaps working with ARIN to adjust those policies would
be a good place to start.

Adi

4

It seems to me that this nicely illustrates a major problem with the
current system. Here we have large blocks of IP space that, by their
own rules, ARIN should take back. It all sounds nice on paper, but
clearly there is a hole in the system whereby ARIN doesn't know and
apparently has no way of figuring out that the space is no longer in
use. It makes me wonder just how much space like that there is out
there artifically increasing IP scarcity. I don't know what the
solution is, but the way things currently work it seems like if you can
justify a block today, it's yours forever even if you stop actively
using it. Maybe allowing for some kind of IP market would cut down on
that type of hoarding -- you would at the very least change the type of
value those subnets have.

Andrew Cruse

5

Many of those legacy allocations were made before ARIN came into being and IP assignments were doled out by the InterNIC. This was also before IANA/ICANN started allocating /8s to the various RIRs to hand out to organizations in their respective geographic areas.

That said I think $RIR's approach has been that they won't push an organization on their legacy blocks. There have been a few cases of organizations willingly turning in their legacy blocks for more appropriately sized ranges in the past.

jms

6

Thus spake <andrew2@one.net>

Once this subject took off on nanog, I have been
oversaturated with people trying to "sell" me ip space. I
have had offers for several /16's for 10,000.00 each that are
no longer in use by the companies who "own" lol them.

It seems to me that this nicely illustrates a major problem with the
current system. Here we have large blocks of IP space that, by their
own rules, ARIN should take back. It all sounds nice on paper, but
clearly there is a hole in the system whereby ARIN doesn't know and
apparently has no way of figuring out that the space is no longer in
use. It makes me wonder just how much space like that there is out
there artifically increasing IP scarcity. I don't know what the
solution is, but the way things currently work it seems like if you can
justify a block today, it's yours forever even if you stop actively
using it. Maybe allowing for some kind of IP market would cut down on
that type of hoarding -- you would at the very least change the type of
value those subnets have.

ARIN's policies allow for grandfathering of allocations/assignments made prior to ARIN's establishment at least in part because they'd be on shaky ground legally trying to revoke them for noncompliance. It's not like those folks would willingly sign an RSA that would immediately result in losing their resources. And the community has, so far, agreed with this because the problem is at least getting no worse; it's manageable to make allowances for a fixed or shrinking number of legacy address space holders.

However, I do recall that ISI ran (runs?) a program trying to contact folks who had legacy allocations and see if they were willing to return the parts they didn't need. Bill Manning reported on the progress a few times, and apparently a large number of those orgs either no longer existed or were willing to give back what they didn't need. I think this approach is acceptable to everyone, though I'd like to see more stats on what's been done and a more official sanction for the work.

Also, IIRC, folks who have legacy allocations/assignments can't get more until their existing space is up to current standards, so it's not like they're getting a free ride on the old space _and_ getting new space. All we have to complain about are the folks that have so much they'll never need more, and those are relatively few in reality. I'm pretty sure the same situation exists for non-legacy space holders; even if you comply at the time of the request, if you later fall below the standards you're safe -- but you can't get more until you're back up to the standards.

All in all, the process is decent, and it has community support. Ideal? No, but nothing ever is when lawyers get involved.

S

Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

7

The fact that there is a lot of space assigned/allocated and not used in any easily observable way is well known to those who track the address exhaustion issue, I think.

As an example, see Geoff Huston's IPv4 Address Report at <http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/>.

Joe

8

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" could
be replaced with "From each according to the ARIN fee schedule, to each
according to our impossible to decipher allocation templates". Marx would be
proud! Centrally managed economic systems seem so wonderful on paper -
that's why so many otherwise very smart people have championed the idea.
Real world experience, on the other hand, has shown that capitalism is the
worst possible method for distributing resources - except for all the other
methods, which are even worse.

Address trading prevents hording, which we have now. And its not just a
little hording, either - Look at Geoff Huston's reports too see how much of
the total IPv4 space is wasted. We economically incent people to waste space
and not turn it back in. If that IP space was fungible, people would sell
it, and more addresses would be available. The sorts of controls we have in
place today tend to raise, rather than lower prices - again, history has
shown this - they encourage scarcity and hoarding.

And, if people have noticed, the Internet is what we use to make money,
these days - at least, the folks on this list.

My opinion is that ARIN should use some of its not inconsiderable warchest
and hire some economists to do some real work on modalities for address
distribution (i.e. give some grants). Aside from the practical utility, some
real science around this topic would be of great intellectual benefit.

- Daniel Golding

9

I find the references to alleged, inherent difficulties with the ARIN resource assignment process increasingly tedious. Even if the templates were "impossible to decipher", this isn't the forum to discuss them.

In my opinion, you do the argument in favour of open trading of addresses as commodities a rank disservice by linking it to this kind of FUD.

Joe

10

Ever notice the only folks happy with the status quo are the few who have
already have an intimate knowledge of the ARIN allocation process, and/or
have the right political connections to resolve the "issues" that come up
when dealing with them?

Try looking at it from an outsider's point of view instead. If you're new
to dealing with ARIN, it is not uncommon to find the process is absolutely
baffling, frustrating, slow, expensive, and requiring intrusive disclosure
just shy of an anal cavity probe.

In any kind of free market system, competition would have bitchslapped the
current ARIN way of doing things a long, long time ago. Personally I find
the single most compelling reason to move to IPv6 to be the removal of any
justification for ARIN's continued existance in its current form.

Somehow I suspect the only folks who wouldn't welcome this are the ones
who benefit from the one thing ARIN is actually good at doing, namely
paying for frequent business class travel and accomodations to exotic
locations around the world under the pretense of "meetings". Hrm guess I
had better offer dinner in St Louis is on me for whichever one of my
friends on the "ARIN travel plan" complains about this post first. :slight_smile:

11

I find the references to alleged, inherent difficulties with the ARIN
resource assignment process increasingly tedious. Even if the
templates were "impossible to decipher", this isn't the forum to
discuss them.

In my opinion, you do the argument in favour of open trading of
addresses as commodities a rank disservice by linking it to this kind
of FUD.

Ever notice the only folks happy with the status quo are the few who have
already have an intimate knowledge of the ARIN allocation process, and/or
have the right political connections to resolve the "issues" that come up
when dealing with them?

I'm not sure I completely buy this. However, I guess these days I'm
one of the "few" who already have an intimate knowledge.
I do remember being frustrated with the process when I was new
to the process and even more so when the process was new.
However, I can say that today, the process is much better documented,
simpler, and more efficient than it was 10 or even 5 years ago.

Try looking at it from an outsider's point of view instead. If you're new
to dealing with ARIN, it is not uncommon to find the process is absolutely
baffling, frustrating, slow, expensive, and requiring intrusive disclosure
just shy of an anal cavity probe.

I've had several clients who indeed perceived it this way. However, in
each of their cases, I was able to spend a few hours working with them
to collect the necessary information, fill out the ARIN template on their
behalf, and, obtain address space for them in between 5 and 20
man hours. In terms of elapsed calendar time from initial submission
to allocation, it ranged from 4-10 days if you don't count delays induced
by my clients not having certain prerequisites in place on time.

In any kind of free market system, competition would have bitchslapped the
current ARIN way of doing things a long, long time ago. Personally I find
the single most compelling reason to move to IPv6 to be the removal of any
justification for ARIN's continued existance in its current form.

I'm not sure this is true. I think if you compare the ARIN process for getting
IP addresses to the FCC process for getting spectrum, ARIN's process is
MUCH easier. Care to venture what it takes to get an allocation for a
geosynchronous orbital slot? Guaranteed that's quite a bit harder than
ARIN's process. Ever try to get your own issuance of phone numbers
from NANPA or another telephone number registry? Yeah, that's quite
a bit harder than ARIN, too.

Can you please point to another registry for globally unique limited
numeric addresses which is easier to deal with than ARIN?

Somehow I suspect the only folks who wouldn't welcome this are the ones
who benefit from the one thing ARIN is actually good at doing, namely
paying for frequent business class travel and accomodations to exotic
locations around the world under the pretense of "meetings". Hrm guess I
had better offer dinner in St Louis is on me for whichever one of my
friends on the "ARIN travel plan" complains about this post first. :slight_smile:

while I have not always seen eye-to-eye with ARIN, this comment is
flat out unjustified in my opinion. ARIN works very hard to provide
an open and transparent governance process. They put significant
effort into outreach trying to make the process easier and more
accessible to newcomers. They have made significant effort to
help people gain access to the addresses they need while still
trying to be an effective gatekeeper against unwarranted hoarding
or unjustified address acquisition.

I'm not on the "ARIN travel plan", but, I do find the public policy
meetings a useful forum. I think that combined with the PPML,
they provide about the best possible process for the evolution of
IP policy in the ARIN service region. If you have a better idea,
let's hear it. How would you like to see things done? The primary
difference between whining and constructive criticism is that
constructive criticism includes suggested remedies to the
situation.

Owen

12

Ever notice the only folks happy with the status quo are the few who have
already have an intimate knowledge of the ARIN allocation process, and/or
have the right political connections to resolve the "issues" that come up
when dealing with them?

No, I haven't noticed that. I have noticed people popping up and saying "so long as you supply the documentation that they ask for, it's pretty easy", however, which certainly matches my experience.

Try looking at it from an outsider's point of view instead. If you're new
to dealing with ARIN, it is not uncommon to find the process is absolutely
baffling, frustrating, slow, expensive, and requiring intrusive disclosure
just shy of an anal cavity probe.

Things that you've never done before can seem difficult. Film at 11.

It's confusing to me that there appears to be no shortage of people who are prepared to learn the three hundred ways of doing the same thing with perl, or how to dissect a core dump, or how BGP works, but who at the same time are not interested in reading the ARIN policy manual before making a request for resources.

Learning curves abound in every direction. The ARIN process is by far the easiest of those examples to get to grips with from someone who has no prior experience.

In any kind of free market system, competition would have bitchslapped the
current ARIN way of doing things a long, long time ago.

I'm not an economist, and this is not a policy list, so I have nothing to say about that here.

Joe

13

Wrong, on all three counts :wink:

You make a living, at least sometimes, making networks do more or better for the same or less. That makes you a practicing/applied economist at least (sorry).

Competition in this case could only lead to a race to the bottom, as the RIR processes that (attempt to) guarantee a tight fit between address allocation and actual production requirements give way to highest-bidder / lowest-requirements wins. Such a shift might serve the interests of those whose pockets are deeper than their interest in the long-term viability of the Internet, but only at the expense of the rest of the operator community, and their customers, present and future.

TV

14

Try looking at it from an outsider's point of view instead. If you're new
to dealing with ARIN, it is not uncommon to find the process is absolutely
baffling, frustrating, slow, expensive, and requiring intrusive disclosure
just shy of an anal cavity probe.

  as is dealing with pretty much any bureaucracy for which you
  are a novice. (FedWire/CBD anyone? :slight_smile:

In any kind of free market system, competition would have bitchslapped the
current ARIN way of doing things a long, long time ago. Personally I find
the single most compelling reason to move to IPv6 to be the removal of any
justification for ARIN's continued existance in its current form.

  but its not "free-market" is it.

Somehow I suspect the only folks who wouldn't welcome this are the ones
who benefit from the one thing ARIN is actually good at doing, namely
paying for frequent business class travel and accomodations to exotic
locations around the world under the pretense of "meetings". Hrm guess I
had better offer dinner in St Louis is on me for whichever one of my
friends on the "ARIN travel plan" complains about this post first. :slight_smile:

  while not i'm particularly enamored of the current status quo,
  it has the distinct advantage of being member-driven. and that
  means if the members want a change, there is a clear path for
  that change to occur. and perhaps its my particular POV, but
  arin members do seem adept at making "disruptive" changes in
  general RIR policies.

--bill

15

It seems to me that this nicely illustrates a major problem with the
current system. Here we have large blocks of IP space that, by their
own rules, ARIN should take back. It all sounds nice on paper, but
clearly there is a hole in the system whereby ARIN doesn't know and
apparently has no way of figuring out that the space is no longer in
use.

Or maybe it means that ARIN has priorities and recovering
this space is low on the priority list. Anyway, you are
wrong. ARIN does have a way of figuring out that the space
is no longer in use. When some sucker buys the addresses and
tries to use them, they will find out that they must first
update ARIN's records. And when they do that, ARIN will learn
about the deal. At that point, they have to justify their address
space just like anyone else, and only get to keep the amount
of address space which they can justify.

The fact that there are few suckers around to buy these addresses
means that these block have been kicking around for a long time.
But if there is ever a crunch for IPv4 address space, you can bet
that ARIN members will empower ARIN to act unilaterally and take
back the space.

but the way things currently work it seems like if you can
justify a block today, it's yours forever even if you stop actively
using it.

You haven't read through ARIN's policies yet, have you?

--Michael Dillon

16

The fact that there is a lot of space assigned/allocated and not used
in any easily observable way is well known to those who track the
address exhaustion issue, I think.

The fact that addresses are not used in an observable way does
not imply that the addresses are not used at all. It simply means
that the observation techniques used are not perfect.

--Michael Dillon

17

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"

could

be replaced with "From each according to the ARIN fee schedule, to each
according to our impossible to decipher allocation templates". Marx

would be

proud! Centrally managed economic systems seem so wonderful on paper -
that's why so many otherwise very smart people have championed the idea.
Real world experience, on the other hand, has shown that capitalism is

the

worst possible method for distributing resources - except for all the

other

methods, which are even worse.

Your tirade is a typical example of Marxist rhetoric. It may
sound good on paper but it does not work in the real world.
For an authentic example of such intellectual argument, read this

by a famous German intellectual whose tomb is in London's
Highgate cemetery. It's only the 1st of 4 chapters, but if
you stick to it, not only will you begin to understand why
theoretical arguments can be pointless, you will also discover
the origin of one of the most well known quotes in the sphere
of economics.

And, if people have noticed, the Internet is what we use to make money,
these days - at least, the folks on this list.

The fact that the Internet is what we use to make money
is the main reason why most of us do not want to make any
major changes to the infrastructure that enables the Internet
such as ARIN itself. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

My opinion is that ARIN should use some of its not inconsiderable

warchest

and hire some economists to do some real work on modalities for address
distribution (i.e. give some grants). Aside from the practical utility,

some

real science around this topic would be of great intellectual benefit.

As I said, a meaningless intellectual exercise...

--Michael Dillon

18

Ever notice the only folks happy with the status quo are the few who

have

already have an intimate knowledge of the ARIN allocation process,

and/or

have the right political connections to resolve the "issues" that come

up

when dealing with them?

In this case, the "right political connections" means that
we go to the ARIN public policy meetings, participate on the
ARIN Public Policy mailing list
http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/ppml
and work to get changes to ARIN policies approved. Like
any other kind of politics, you lose some and you win some
because, in the end, ARIN doesn't do things my way or
your way. That's the politics of compromise.

Try looking at it from an outsider's point of view instead. If you're

new

to dealing with ARIN, it is not uncommon to find the process is

absolutely

baffling, frustrating, slow, expensive, and requiring intrusive

disclosure

just shy of an anal cavity probe.

Sounds like my very first time trying to get an IP network
functioning between an SCO Xenix server and a bunch of
DOS and Windows 3.0 workstations. Education and experience
do work wonders to solve this problem.

--Michael Dillon

19

Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

Ever notice the only folks happy with the status quo are the few who have already have an intimate knowledge of the ARIN allocation process, and/or have the right political connections to resolve the "issues" that come up when dealing with them?

Try looking at it from an outsider's point of view instead. If you're new to dealing with ARIN, it is not uncommon to find the process is absolutely baffling, frustrating, slow, expensive, and requiring intrusive disclosure just shy of an anal cavity probe.

I take offense to all this misinformation based on my not so long ago viewpoint as an outsider. Based on everything I heard here, I had a negative view of ARIN. After all, everyone here deals with them. If they hate dealing with ARIN, it must be horrible. Live an learn.

My experiences with ARIN are simple. It was a lot of work. I didn't have any of my netblocks SWIP'd, hadn't analyzed my network in the way that ARIN wanted, and so I had to work to get all this information together the first time. However, I found ARIN easy to work with. They helped me out when I had questions, and when I was terrified that they wouldn't give me IPs, they were generous. My second time in dealing with them was aggravating, as I wanted more than what they issued (they use time between requests to determine a trend of actual IP utilization). However, they were right, and my last request expanded the previous request block out (I love contiguous when I can have it) and started a new one (yipee! another route!).

Please remember the outsiders. They expect that everyone dealing with ARIN and talking bad about the process to know what they are talking about. ARIN may not be perfect, but newcomers shouldn't be afraid. The hardest part is information gathering to setup for the first time, as many people don't have the information ARIN requests readily available. After that, a little due diligence and it's a cake walk.

-Jack

20

a message of 45 lines which said:

It's confusing to me that there appears to be no shortage of people
who are prepared to learn the three hundred ways of doing the same
thing with perl, or how to dissect a core dump, or how BGP works,
but who at the same time are not interested in reading the ARIN
policy manual before making a request for resources.

I may be very special but I find learning a new programming language
or a new protocol much more fun than reading thick and boring policy
documents.

I've heard that lawyers or accountants have different tastes but I
believe they are rare on this mailing list.