IP Address News

Providing you with a single site about IP Addresses News and Usage

IP Address News - Providing you with a single site about IP Addresses News and Usage

Monthly Archives: September 2012

Legacy IPv4 Address “rights”

The Internet Governance Project (IGP) has posted a letter from the general counsel of the National Science Foundation regarding the status of Legacy IPv4 addresses.

In IGP’s commentary regarding the letter, they claim that this letter confirms a legacy holder’s right to “own their number blocks.”   While the letter is certainly an interesting read and its existence is somewhat curious, I don’t really believe this letter resolves anything.

The letter to me clearly states that the NSF general counsel believes that NSI under the NSF contract granted the organization which received the IPv4 Addresses certain rights to use those addresses.  Furthermore, the letter goes on to state that NSI did not and could not unilaterally revoke those rights and that the “NSF does not believe ARIN, or for that matter any other organization, could retroactively affect property and rights distributed to you.”

In a comment to the blog post, John Curran CEO of ARIN writes “The concern has never been about ARIN unilaterally reclaiming number resources; it has been about changes to the number resources in the registry and whether such changes must comply with community policy.  The letter further does not address in the least ARIN’s operation of the registry…”

My personal opinion is that the ambiguity that does exist regarding the relationship of Legacy IPv4 Address holders who has not signed a registration services agreement with an RIRs will not fully be resolved until a US federal court rules on the specific issues surrounding their status and specific “rights.”   It also seems likely that US federal law or regulation could also clear up any ambiguity, but a resolution method through the court system seems more likely.  Even then only further litigation can fully resolve any claims a legacy holder or ARIN claim to assert.

I encourage you to read the letter yourself to see what it does or does not say.

 

Tubes – A look into the physical Internet infrastructure

This post is a little off topic from the normal posts here, but I thought this was a worthwhile diversion.

Recently, a new book “Tubes: A journey to the Center of the Internet” by Andrew Blum was released which took an in depth look into the physical infrastructure that makes the Internet work.   For many people what happens on the Internet to get data and information from some “remote” location to our computers and mobile phones is just magic.  This book highlights some of the lesser known aspects of the ‘physical Internet.’  I recently had a chance to read the book and was excited about how accurately the infrastructure was described.  Sometimes, when I read technical articles written by journalists about the Internet industry I’m amazed at the way certain aspects get confused.  I was delighted that this didn’t happen to me as I read.  While the detail in the book wasn’t necessarily news to me it was fun to read about another person’s perspective on the industry that I’ve been working in.

The book is a little technical and geeky at times, but if you are curious about how the Internet works and is instantiated at a physical level pick up a copy or find one at your local library and give it a read.

RIPE reaches IPv4 exhaustion

The RIPE NCC announced today that they have only one /8 remaining from their available IPv4 pool and have moved to the exhaustion state of allocations.  Organizations with additional needs may only request one /22 allocation even if they can justify more IPv4 addresses.

RIPE now joins APNIC who exhausted their free pool in April 2011 as the two RIRs who no longer have available IPv4 for allocation.  Recent statistics predict that ARIN should be the next RIR to exhaust their free pool perhaps as early as 2013.

RIPE NCC Begins to Allocate IPv4 Address Space From the Last /8

Europe officially runs out of IPv4 addresses

Study on IPv4 transfer market

The Internet Governance Project has released a study regarding the first IPv4 market transfers.

This report discusses what is known about the IPv4 market transfers which have occurred since the implementation of specified transfers within the ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC region.  The report brings together a number of sources to come up with the a total of 83 transactions representing 204 blocks for a total of 6 million IPv4 addresses traded between 2009 and the first half of 2012.

The data for IPv4 market transactions is obscured, however, due to the lack of transparency for all transactions.  While many have called for additional transparency, full transparency seems unlikely given the current constraints of the RIRs and the lack of other compelling regulations which would require disclosure of IPv4 market transactions.

As expected, the source of most of the transferred blocks are legacy IPv4 holders in the ARIN region.  The authors seem surprised that the majority of the transfers occurred in the ARIN region.  Given the expected supply for the IPv4 transfer market was expected to come from legacy IPv4 holders (who are largely in the ARIN region) and that an inter-RIR transfer policy was not in place until mid-2012, it is a logical conclusion that the majority of transfers would occur from and to ARIN region entities.

Unfortunately, I believe the study is also laden and interwoven with the authors opinions regarding the market rather than strictly focusing on the facts about the known market.

Full Report: http://www.internetgovernance.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/IPv4marketTPRC20121.pdf   (copy)