On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, andrew2@one.net wrote:
It seems to me that this nicely illustrates a major problem with the current system. Here we have large blocks of IP space that, by their own rules, ARIN should take back. It all sounds nice on paper, but clearly there is a hole in the system whereby ARIN doesn't know and apparently has no way of figuring out that the space is no longer in use. It makes me wonder just how much space like that there is out there artifically increasing IP scarcity. I don't know what the solution is, but the way things currently work it seems like if you can justify a block today, it's yours forever even if you stop actively using it. Maybe allowing for some kind of IP market would cut down on that type of hoarding -- you would at the very least change the type of value those subnets have.
Many of those legacy allocations were made before ARIN came into being and IP assignments were doled out by the InterNIC. This was also before IANA/ICANN started allocating /8s to the various RIRs to hand out to organizations in their respective geographic areas. That said I think $RIR's approach has been that they won't push an organization on their legacy blocks. There have been a few cases of organizations willingly turning in their legacy blocks for more appropriately sized ranges in the past. jms