Re: "Leasing" of space via non-connectivity providers

[Scott Helms <khelms () ispalliance net>]

John,

    I would hope that if some ARIN policy is enacted there would be 
some way to differentiate between organizations, like the one I belong 
to, that have provided this kind of service to customers for a number of 
years and organizations looking to take advantage of the new scarcity.  
We have and do provide IP space for other ISPs (mainly small and mid 
size) despite not providing connectivity for a number of reasons.  We 
began providing this as a way of getting connectivity provider 
independent space to ISPs that lacked their own ASN and usually were not 
multi-homed because I had so many ISPs changing their upstream provider 
that it was causing us issues in both our engineering and call center 
teams.  We provide network engineering (think re-IPing lots of ISP 
networks) and end user technical support (think lots of calls from upset 
customer who had to change their static IP) for many ISPs around the 
country.  We certainly don't have a huge allocation, we have 209 /24s 
reassigned and 9 reallocated currently.  We also pass along all of the 
usage and reporting requirements that ARIN requires of us.  We also 
don't make money on the practice we charge a small amount on an annual 
basis for record keeping.  As I said, we started this mainly to prevent 
network disruption and extra work _not_ as a profit center.

    How a line might be drawn I don't know, but its important to 
understand that there are very legitimate reasons to reassign or 
reallocate space even if you are not providing connectivity for a given 
network.


On 2/3/2011 11:54 AM, John Curran wrote:
> On Feb 3, 2011, at 11:32 AM, Jon Lewis wrote:
>
> > My point being, the leasing of IP space to non-connectivity customers is already well established, whether it's technically 
> > permitted by the [ir]relevant RIRs.  I fully expect this to continue and spread. Eventually, holders of large legacy blocks will 
> > realize they can make good money acting as an LIR, leasing portions of their unused space to people who need it and can't get it, 
> > want it and don't qualify, etc.
> >
> > These start-up LIRs won't be bound by RIR policies, both because in some cases they'll be legacy space holders with no RSA with their 
> > region's RIR, and because they won't be worried about eligibility for future RIR allocations of v4 space...because there won't be 
> > any.
> For the ARIN region, it would be nice to know how you'd like ARIN perform
> in the presence of such activity ("leasing" IP addresses by ISP not providing
> connectivity).  It's possible that such is perfectly reasonable and to simply
> be ignored, it's also possible that such should be considered a fraudulent
> transfer and the resources reclaimed.  At the end of the day, the policy is
> set by this community, and clarity over ambiguity is very helpful.
>
> Policy proposal process: https://www.arin.net/policy/pdp.html
>
> Thanks!
> /John
>
> John Curran
> President and CEO
> ARIN


--
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ISP Alliance, Inc. DBA ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
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