[rpd] [Community-Discuss] Unaddressed queries by AFRINIC during AGMM

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jun 26, 2021, at 06:33 , Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com> wrote:

> 

> I get shocked every time I see people trying to make it normal things like IP Leasing or usage of resources out of the region, as it it was something from the day by day. The only thing I can think of this is because that may be interesting financially to them despite it goes in the totally wrong direction of how IP space has always been treated and should keep be, always remembering it is not something the belong to any organization but is in custody of.

> 

You are simply completely and totally wrong about this.

RIRs were intended to provide timezone/language convenience and to allow for policies to vary according to regionally unique needs/culture/etc. They were never intended to limit the freedom for a member/resource holder to use the addresses on any host or for any customer they served.

Show me a single LIR that does not lease addresses (or at least address registrations)? If you want static addresses from comcast Business, they charge you $15/month for a block of 5. If that’s not a lease, please explain what it is.

It may be that your lease price is built into your IP service, but you’re still paying $X/time to get addresses from them.

If that’s not day-to-day normal since time immemorial, even going back to the days of NSFNET Regionals, then every ISP I’ve ever worked with or for is in the “not day to day normal” category.

> - What is the point to allow resources issued by a certain RIR to be used elsewhere in the world and not in the region where they were originally issued by IANA ? If it was the case then we don't need RIRs with their own pools and rules, just have a global pool which would certainly be unfair to certain regions that have different different needs and evolve in different speeds.

> 


The point is that a company in Sydney, AU may have world wide operations that they want to number from a single contiguous block of IP addresses. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to get numbers from APNIC in a manner convenient to their headquarters and use those addresses throughout their network, even if their network is not entirely contained in the APNIC service region.

Further, four out of five RIRs now support bidirectional inter-regional address transfers, so the “originally issued by IANA” idea is an anachronism at best.

Heck, even with the advent of ERX, the idea of addresses staying where they were originally issued by IANA is questionable and ERX was a long time ago (at least 10, if not 20 years ago, I can’t recall the exact start/end years).

> It is understandable certain specific usages like anycast or small portions of IP space outside the region in order to support the operations in the region, but not simply an organization come here, estabilish an legal local company request IP addresses and go to use them elsewhere in the world.

> 

There are four principle possibilities in my view:

1.	(simple) An organization whose operations are entirely within one RIR’s service region.
	In this case, said ORG should obviously get their addresses from that RIR and there is no issue. I believe you and I are in agreement on this case.

2.	(simple) An organization whose operations are almost entirely within one RIR’s service region, but which has supporting connectivity in other regions.
	You’ve already stated above that you support out-of-region use for this case and so we agree here. This is essentially case 1 with some fudge factor.

3.	(not so simple) An organization which has multiple headquarters in multiple countries around the world and which has a significant global network
	infrastructure.

	You seem to think that such a company should be forced to deal with the RIR in each and every region in which it operates and get discontiguous
	network space to number its infrastructure in each applicable region.

	I think this is not the intent of the RIR system, was never the intent of the RIR system, and is not good for the internet. It creates an unnecessary
	fragmentation of the address space. It means that such a company needs to become familiar with and keep up on the policies and procedures
	in 5 RIRs instead of just 1. It increases the burden on both the RIR system and the company in question with absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

4.	(simple) An organization which has no operations, facilities, legal nexus, or infrastructure in a particular RIR region. I think we all agree that
	such a company should not be obtaining resources from any RIR where this is the case.

> - Leasing is another absurd that I really fail to understand how people consider it normal. Just think for a minute: when a organization request IP space from the RIR it is for its own usage and for its customers usages which it provides connectivity and don't have the possibility to hold their own IP space. It is pretty obvious !

> 

When you lease an address to a customer, it is for the customer to use. Whether there is connectivity associated with said lease or not, the reality is that it is still a lease. The customer is still paying a fee to use addresses you delegate to them.

So really, your objection isn’t to all leasing, you are merely objecting to the case where the lease is not tied to a contract for connectivity services?

> Does it make any sense to justify to the RIR: "I need this extra IP space in order to lease them to other ASNs which according to the rules of the their RIR, cannot request anymore". Just look how absurd this can be !

> 

How about “I need extra IP space to provide to my customers as an ISP within the rules of the RIR.”

If that’s not absurd, then again,  you are overloading the term leasing with a lot of constraints that it doesn’t actually include.

LIRs lease addresses to their customers… It’s what LIRs do. Most LIRs do this with an associated connectivity contract.

> And works the same for organization who already have IP space issued. If it is leasing part of it to some other organization then it is crystal clear that part of those addresses which have been justified in the past are not needed anymore by that organization and should be returned as they don't justify for them anymore. It might sound 'cruel' to those who are doing that but it is the obvious. Rules can't allow organizations to create 'address estates' with something they don't own.

> 

You may not own the addresses, but you do own your registration of those addresses so long as you have paid the relevant fees and meet the terms of the RSA for that registration.

In reality, ownership of integers is an absurd concept to begin with, but so is a contract for exclusive use of an integer. How can IANA preclude anyone from using 5. I guarantee you that there are billions of uses of the number 5 all over the world that have nothing to do with RIPE or any of the entities they have allocated portions of it to. Further, since RIRs don’t have the power of a government, the reality is that any sort of “exclusive use” of a number on the internet that they claim to grant is strictly by the consent and cooperation of the people who run actual routers. The Internet has no central governing authority. Each network operator makes their own decisions about what routes and packets to accept, what to forward, etc. So if an operator chooses to treat a customer as if they are the rightful user of 5.0.0.0/8 and route traffic to them, about the only real recourse is to stop listening to some or all of their route announcements and/or de-peer them. There might be a civil case for tortious interference, but that gets into complex areas of the law and IANAL, so I won’t speculate beyond that.

> And by the way: when a LIR assigns IP addresses to their connectivity customers this is NOT a lease but an administrative fee to cover costs to keep all infrastructure necessary to have those IPs up and running, including the same very administrative fee that is paid to the RIR for the same proposes.

> 

That's like saying that when you tip the Host at a restaurant to get a better table, it’s not a bribe, but a tip. Yeah, sure.

Regardless of your sophistry about the terminology, it’s a periodic fee paid in order to retain the registration of a set of addresses in your favor. Call it a log cabin, a duck, or a rose, it’s still a form of a lease.

In cases where you pay a single fee to an ISP and the addresses are included, yes, part of what you pay is the lease of the address registrations themselves and part of it is the cost of the connectivity, etc.

However, in many cases (and more and more common these days) ISPs are charging separate fees for any IPv4 addresses beyond a particular base amount. Comcast Business (one of the largest Cable
MSOs and also one of the largest business fiber providers in the united states) for example charges $15/month for a bundle of 5 addresses. Certainly that charge isn’t covering any sort of infrastructure
cost as you describe, the other much larger charge on the bill for your connectivity services covers that.

> I invite those who still struggle to understand these points to make an effort and not make absurd points like this look normal and acceptable.

> 

I invite you to take another look at the economic, technical, and legal realities of the situation you are mischaracterizing here and reconsider your position.

> Just a final note about transfer process which involves a payment to the source organization in this case I don't see as an issue because at least the receiving organization will have to justify the need to the RIR, so at least community is ensured those transferred resources will in fact be used by someone who really need and justify them. So if one has space which is not use anymore and believe they will never be necessary in the future just transfer them to another organization and transfer policies will do what they were thought to do.

> 

Any lease done within the constraints of RIR policy is done based on a justified need, whether or not connectivity is involved. If someone is leasing addresses they don’t need, then A) They are a fool paying rent on a useless thing, and B) that does not conform to the policies by which LIRs are allowed to provision space to their customers.

Owen


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