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

[Fernando Frediani]

In the recent times as IPv4 exhaustion advances it's becoming more and 
more common to see defenses for a total liberalization in a "no rules 
scenario" of IP space regulation using nice words as "new economic, 
technical, and legal realities".

The reality is that that most benefited from that are only a few 
companies who financially benefit during these difficult times, 
regardless of things like fairness and economic and social development 
of a region. These actors know the value of this market will have its 
peak and then will start to come back down, so it is somehow 
understandable the pressure we have been seen to try to make some 
absurds like IP leasing to non-connectivity customers or use out of the 
region as something "normal and acceptable".

It is not by chance that some RIRs Community have chosen that majority 
of addresses must be used within in the region and the impacts it has on 
the social and economics of that region. It is a loss when every new 
company or entrepreneurship struggles to launch a new business due to 
the lack of addresses in the region that were taken way to be used 
elsewhere and these type of situations cannot simply be taken as "new 
economic, technical, and legal realities". In those scenarios where only 
a few actors earn their chunk of money regardless the losses to the 
region such movements can't be accept as something natural.

It was probably in the line of "new economic, technical, and legal 
realities" the some RIRs didn't choose to have soft landing phases which 
certainly leads to a significant unfairness to newcomers and new 
business coming up and also to a higher market concentration. 
Fortunately for the less economic-developed regions in the world (LACNIC 
and AfriNic) this didn't happen and this discourse of "new economic, 
technical, and legal realities" was not predominant.

During the first discussions of Inter-RIR transfer policy, while AfriNic 
was still on Phase 1 of the soft landing we could see a big concern of 
several people about possibility of IP space be simply stolen from 
Africa and I believe that is still a concern of many and I doubt that 
these many would find it normal things like out of region usage or IP 
leasing.

Regards
Fernando

On 26/06/2021 21:49, Owen DeLong wrote:

>

>

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

>> <mailto: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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