Solving the ARIN/IANA Problem

[Jim Fleming <JimFleming@doorstep.unety.net>]

When the U.S. Government forms the new IANA Inc.
it might be able to solve many of the problems that
people have with ARIN by delegating EXACTLY the
same number of /8s to some other North American
companies similar to ARIN. Those companies can
then offer address space to customers that is
equivalent to ARIN with only the left octet changed.
This can allow companies to migrate out of the
ARIN space, thus giving ARIN more space to sell.

This will help allow companies to choose the registry
that carries their IN-ADDR.ARPA domain names.
They can choose between the various business
models that might be offered. This will prevent them
from being locked-in to ARIN and as noted will give
ARIN more resources if companies move. The penalty
will be that companies have to renumber, but some
companies are prepared to do this. One of the limits
would be that companies would only be able to
trade space for the exact same equivalent space.
In other words, they would not be able to expand into
neighboring space for some period of time.

The U.S. Government could specify some transition
period where companies are allowed to make this
exchange and could help to facilitate the process.
Since the U.S. Government helped to create ARIN,
this seems like the least the U.S. Government could
do to allow companies to have a choice over what
registry they obtain their IP address resources from.

Now...before people start jumping up and down and
pointing out that companies would not want to move
because ARIN is not charging grandfathered companies
anything, I suggest this might be *exactly* the reason
why companies would want to move. Companies may
want to move to a registry that charges a small annual
fee and provides a long-term written contract as opposed
to the current situation where companies hold their
breath wondering what their relationship is to ARIN
which is a private company staffed by people they do
not know and have no contractual or financial relationship
with.
-
Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation
IBC, Tortola, BVI