Colleagues:

I have prepared a paper on address transfer policy which will be released soon. It is now being reviewed. Due to RIPE’s impending July 9 comment deadline I am sending the abstract of the paper to this list. Anyone interested in receiving a copy of the paper can contact me privately and I will send a copy when it is finished. If you have expertise in the economics of addressing or other virtual resources I’d be happy to send an advance draft for review. Of course, we can also discuss and elaborate here on some of the conclusions presented.  

Dr. Milton Mueller,

Professor, Syracuse University School Of Information Studies

XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology

IPv4 Address Markets and the Regional Internet Address Registries.

Abstract

We are running out of Internet addresses. This paper evaluates address transfer policies that Internet governance agencies are considering as a response to the depletion of the IPv4 address space. The paper focuses on proposals to allow organizations holding IPv4 addresses to sell address blocks to other organizations willing to buy them. This paper analyzes the economics of the proposed transfer policies, and conducts a systematic comparison of the policies proposed in the three main world Internet regions. It concludes that:

· Address transfer markets offer a pragmatic solution to the problem of reclaiming a substantial amount of unused IP address space and of re-allocating addresses to their most efficient uses

· The risks of instituting well-designed address transfer policies are small when compared to the potential benefits. The change is less radical than it appears.

· A failure to legitimize address transfer markets would create substantial risks of the institutionalization of gray or black markets in IPv4 address resources, leading to a deterioration of accurate registration and administration of the legacy address space. This could have severe negative implications for Internet security.

· The need for a transfer policy stands on its own and should not be considered part of a transition plan to the new Internet version protocol version 6. We do not know how long or even whether the global Internet will succeed migrating to IPv6. It would therefore be irresponsible to base IPv4 management policies on an assumption that such a migration will take place.

· The proposed address transfer policies being considered by RIPE and APNIC are more liberal than ARIN’s. Most of the legacy IPv4 address space is in North America; thus, the policies ARIN adopts have the most importance and should be formulated with the good of the global Internet in mind. RIPE, ARIN and APNIC should strive to harmonize their transfer policies and (in the longer term) make inter-regional transfers possible.