On 21/03/2013 15:32, Tore Anderson wrote:
This was not the case prior to the "last /8" policy - if it wasn't for the need principle, an LIR would have been able to repeatedly go to the NCC and receive space that it could in turn delegate further in an wasteful manner. With the "last /8" policy in effect, however, this safety mechanism is no longer necessary - because no matter how excessively an LIR makes delegations to its end users, it can only receive a single /22 from the space covered by the "last /8" policy, ever.
But they can also reveive much bigger spaces from buying them. Then they will no be constrained anymore by the fair use policy. So what could happen is that large IP spaces get sold and used thus exceeding very much the simple /22 spaces you mention. Maybe sometimes "fair use" users could even be moved away to make spaces available for selling in the worst cases (I know this is a very pessimistic example but I'm pretty sure it will happen). Less dramatically never decreasing cases of "for money" or simply "bad" assignments will occur, just like entropy does (quantity of mess in a natural system). I believe a good policy should ensure free space returns to available pool for fair use needs, but since allocation transfer is allowed it should not be an allowed bypass of such a fair policy. With time, users and LIRs will just stop using IPv4, but until this happens I believe we need fair use and conservation principle. NB: "private" space does not exist for me : internet *is* public, all of it, and ressources are delegated to LIRs, then users, but not owned by them.