finally they start selling it. Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef> ________________________________ From: NANOG <nanog-bounces@nanog.org> on behalf of Siyuan Miao <aveline@misaka.io> Sent: Friday, July 19, 2019 11:07:38 AM To: Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists@gmail.com> Cc: nanog list <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: 44/8 Did a fast lookup via ARIN WHOIS: 44/8 is now 44/9 + 44.128/10 NetRange: 44.0.0.0 - 44.191.255.255 CIDR: 44.0.0.0/9<http://44.0.0.0/9>, 44.128.0.0/10<http://44.128.0.0/10> NetName: AMPRNET NetHandle: NET-44-0-0-0-1 Parent: NET44 (NET-44-0-0-0-0) NetType: Direct Assignment OriginAS: Organization: Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) RegDate: 1992-07-01 Updated: 2019-07-18 Ref: https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/44.0.0.0 On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 11:04 AM Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists@gmail.com<mailto:morrowc.lists@gmail.com>> wrote: On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 10:59 PM Majdi S. Abbas <msa@latt.net<mailto:msa@latt.net>> wrote:

What's interesting about this is it was not an ARIN allocation,

So.. this is/was a legacy allocation, right? with some 'not great' contact/etc info... the ARIN folk could have said: "Well.... sure! if the current folk who control access can positively show they do AND they don't mind parting with a /10... ok?" This ends up with a /10 of a /8 with better registration information and MAYBE better records keeping over time, right? that seems like a win to the ARIN community?

On 07/18/2019 at 23:08, Job Snijders wrote:

A potential upside is that hamnet operators maybe have access to some RPKI services now!

OK, I'll bite....how do you mean? --Adam

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 11:02:40PM -0400, Christopher Morrow wrote:

So.. this is/was a legacy allocation, right? with some 'not great' contact/etc info...

It's been announced by UCSD as a /8, consistently available, with tunnel services and rDNS available on a consistent basis, for a long time. The folks involved are not hard to find and never have been. Amusingly, they still seem to be advertising the covering aggregate, so I guess the Cal system is going to provide transit to Amazon? Do the Regents know about this arrangement?

the ARIN folk could have said: "Well.... sure! if the current folk who control access can positively show they do AND they don't mind parting with a /10... ok?"

... I'm not sure this would make the 44/8 allocation anything but a bogon, or ARIN WHOIS & RPKI a reliable resource for the community. Potentially quite the contrary. If I start advertising space, and can show I thusly "control" it, can I monetize it, too? I could use "some millions." --msa

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 11:21:58PM -0400, Christopher Morrow wrote:

who knows? probably? not really my personal concern I guess.

If they're using taxpayer supported networks to provide transit to a private, for profit entity, we should all care.

I'm not sure how you're quite going in this direction...

In order to sell something, you must own it...if you pop up, claim responsibility for it, sit on it a while, and then sell it.. did you truly own it? If you represent a community, in theory, and sell something without prior discussion, are there ethical concerns around that? There are some potential legal title questions around this, and if ARIN is facilitating transactions with questionable history, that is something the Internet community might be concerned about. Certainly, facilitating questionable transfers makes the idea of an RIR sponsored registry that controls routing less palatable to some individuals. And this is why I'd love some additional color from the participants. Perhaps this is all explicable -- but that blog entry did not assuage my concerns. --msa

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 11:47:21PM -0400, Christopher Morrow wrote:

Also, who's this 'we'.. I don't live in california... I presume UC is getting funding from california, not virginia. (mostly) It seems though that 44/8 was being used in some research project at UC so... maybe this is just that still at play. less nefarious and more 'meh, why change if we don't have to?'

[Off-NANOG] Chris, Remember that state college systems receive federal education funding; some of your dollars are in this pot, too. --msa

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 7/18/19 11:56 PM, Christopher Morrow wrote:

Sure,but... that space has been an internet telescope supporting numerous research folk for a decade + (probably closer to 2 decades). the amazon prefix is longer by a bit so won't really use the /8 even if ucsd keeps the /8 up.

And one of the principal people in the network telescope project was KC, who also weaseled herself onto the ARDC board without even holding an amateur radio license. Conflict of interest here, holy carp. Caida has been using an amateur radio resource as far back as 2001, when we couldn't even be blessed to get 44net space for our own legitimate radio use. I'm sure I have the message from Brian denying it in my archives. - -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEaESdNosUjpjcN/JhYTmgYVLGkUAFAl0xRoQACgkQYTmgYVLG kUBDmA//XOUz4PtyFktPm0Yi2jyA56y1QGLdZrgc+dfk8mPImjE3ipaJ+GgUEwEY a10TccbNuC9hWZv1n1F/pD/Kcn+An9uhHOOrIIb9DfST0eUq/qhlK00tbq/1WJtI SKOvJNhdE7815ucl4096e5fEOv7HQg9SxRpstLN/zZffFBL0R3fPtKEWbrgxA6lN Ldj3DnCie7tMG0ZXSTUkHBoumE7NlAcEolQhdu1SrnCbePtbEk/oSy0krT6xIoz5 BoXKarFAh/Ti1LMTUnDt2g1XEKrTtUI40egSzAlBXGvLzkDqW5539ZY+X5HElZzM Kqo84qmupX04xW1QFyA0EtKIwc1RD0PtnN6xhqOQ04llXYp6q82MKlNfgrvC+A2+ W2fq6EOZXAmRobNnfWt6g2k6I9Tc7fRc2xdMZNd8SU8BML/F3wfPPAnifaYqem2Z eoFtVhNr+yaAKUo7OumkfXI40Ab1AfP+r/iGiRg/S3oejhcVMyrZpd6mKAZ6OdiD lbi+lV4K2T0yKntRifqE/R1ASi7RjF379g63IOq1e2CpLbkRljNKx9gi/iU95PP2 C4qxcmX2SRPPDoGiz7Wom9UtWO9NxSFWISVqNL3jdOkCi3388TpRiI4mKLopLgzz wS9FozypHtRFOBZM0D7+1yckxhsf1Q4lZ0WNIVGNlCl6PaU7CnU= =1JCu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Jul 18, 2019, at 21:31 , Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 12:28 AM Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:

...

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256

On 7/18/19 11:56 PM, Christopher Morrow wrote:

...

Sure,but... that space has been an internet telescope supporting numerous research folk for a decade + (probably closer to 2 decades). the amazon prefix is longer by a bit so won't really use the /8 even if ucsd keeps the /8 up.

And one of the principal people in the network telescope project was KC, who also weaseled herself onto the ARDC board without even holding an amateur radio license. Conflict of interest here, holy carp.

having a large user of the space (and perhaps even a partner to the org) be a part of the board doesn't seem like a conflict.

There is some question as to the legitimacy of a large allocation of this space to CAIDA as CAIDA has virtually nothing to do with Amateur Radio. Putting someone without an Amateur Radio License who represents such an organization does, actually, look like a COI to me. Don’t get me wrong… I like KC and I think CAIDA does some great stuff. I just don’t think it serves an Amateur Radio purpose and thus doesn’t really belong in 44.0.0.0/8.

...

Caida has been using an amateur radio resource as far back as 2001, when we couldn't even be blessed to get 44net space for our own legitimate radio use. I'm sure I have the message from Brian denying it in my archives.

I'm sure you can pursue legal avenues if you feel this went super sideways. you should do that

I suspect that’s not unlikely, but I’m still trying to learn more about what and how it happened first. Owen KB6MER

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019, Phil Karn wrote:

...

And one of the principal people in the network telescope project was KC, who also weaseled herself onto the ARDC board without even holding an amateur radio license.  Conflict of interest here, holy carp.

You are not in possession of all the facts.

KC (Kim Claffy) is KC6KCC.

https://www.fccbulletin.com/callsign/?q=KC6KCC The grant date was 2018-02-21. So both of the above statements can be true at the same time since I have no idea when KC joined the ARDC board. When was that? Also, reading: http://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/ARDC "It solely manages and allocates Internet address space, subnets of network 44 (AMPRNet), to interested Amateur Radio operators." Seems ARDC does more than this nowadays. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019, Phil Karn wrote:

...

...

And one of the principal people in the network telescope project was KC, who also weaseled herself onto the ARDC board without even holding an amateur radio license.  Conflict of interest here, holy carp.

You are not in possession of all the facts.

KC (Kim Claffy) is KC6KCC.

https://www.fccbulletin.com/callsign/?q=KC6KCC

The grant date was 2018-02-21.

So both of the above statements can be true at the same time since I have no idea when KC joined the ARDC board. When was that?

Also, reading: http://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/ARDC

"It solely manages and allocates Internet address space, subnets of network 44 (AMPRNet), to interested Amateur Radio operators."

Seems ARDC does more than this nowadays.

Not meaning to pour fuel on the fire...but KC was affiliated with (CFO) ARDC at least as far back as 2015. Do a search for Amateur Radio Digital Communications at https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CBS/Detail Also of interest, ARDC was only incorporated (in CA) in 2011, "anonymously" since the Articles of Incorporation filed with the state in 2011 are signed with no printed name, using an illegible signature. How does an organization incorporated years after 44/8 was set aside for amatuer radio use end up "owning" it enough to have the right to sell a portion of it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route | therefore you are _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 8:48 PM Majdi S. Abbas <msa@latt.net> wrote:

In order to sell something, you must own it...if you pop up, claim responsibility for it, sit on it a while, and then sell it.. did you truly own it?

Yes, actually. The legal term is "adverse possession" or more colloquially "squatters rights." Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

On Jul 19, 2019, at 6:03 AM, John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote: Be specific in your report regarding what change you believe was in error and why – we investigate all such reports and will correct any changes made in error.

Actually, I’d love to hear an official statement from ARIN about the state of this transfer - it’s legitimacy, ARINs involvement with it, who approved of the transfer (if any) etc. Was ARIN not involved? If not, why not? 44/8 isn’t like a normal assignment. It’s a legacy assignment likely with stipulations from when it was originally assigned to the HAM group(s). From the outside, this smells fishy and reeks of backroom deals. I remember when ARIN was handing out /20s to shell company spam spewers on a daily basis, with fraudulent Whois records and companies that were formed the day before just to get clean IP space to spew from. The drawn out bullshit I had to deal with just to legitimately transfer a legacy /24 from an old consulting company to my new one, where you (ARIN) demanded we hand over confidential business documents including asset lists, company financials... So yeah, some of us kinda view this with a huge level of awe and disgust. I’m not a HAM license holder, but that doesn’t mean that situations like this don’t make me worry.

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 9:54 AM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

As stated before, ARIN did receive and process a request from the 44/8 registrant to transfer a portion of the block to another party.

For all transfer requests, we review and confirm:

- That the source of the transfer is the legal entity which holds the rights to the address block in the registry - That the transfer is authorized by an registered officer of that legal entity - That the recipient org has approval per policy to receive an address block of the appropriate size

You may have other questions that are better referred to the registrant (Amateur Radio Digital Communications); e.g. regarding why the request was made – I will note that the contact information for the block is current in the Whois database, and available at < https://search.arin.net/rdap/?query=44.0.0.0>

Hey John, I think perhaps the relevant questions for ARIN here are: 1> How did the organization currently holding the rights to the 44/8 block come to hold those rights, and how did ARIN verify that it held those rights? 2> Did ARIN ensure that the establishment of an ARIN RSA for the 44/8 block did not violate any prior agreements related to the stewardship of the 44/8 block? If so, how was this done? 3> What were the terms under which the rights to the 44/8 block was held by said organization prior to the establishment of an ARIN RSA? 4> When was an ARIN RSA established which covered the 44/8 block? The bigger question here is how we got to the point where an organization with virtually no transparency came to hold the legal rights to a community asset without any sort of oversight or contractual obligations with regard to management of said resource. Ultimately that means figuring out if the legacy agreements by which 44/8 was held by the organization did indeed include encumberences on the sale or transfer of the space (which would make sense, if I am giving stewardship of a large community asset to an organization, I'm going to include stipulations about what they can't do with it, and selling it to a for-profit entity for cash is going to be #1 on that list.) Thanks, Matt

Hi Guys Today there are over 200 networks announced on big internet on 44/8. It's normal ? Ciao, Il giorno ven 19 lug 2019 alle ore 17:17 John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> ha scritto:

On 19 Jul 2019, at 11:06 AM, Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

...

Hey John, I think perhaps the relevant questions for ARIN here are: ...

Matt -

ARIN doesn’t publicly discuss details of any specific registration requests; you would need to refer any of those questions to the registrant.

Thanks, /John

John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers

-- Marco Paesani Skype: mpaesani Mobile: +39 348 6019349 Success depends on the right choice ! Email: marco@paesani.it

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 10:58 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

Hence it's no longer "legacy" space that isn't covered by an RIR RSA but is instead now covered by an ARIN RSA.

'RIR RSA" is not a thing. Legacy blocks are basically drifting in the winds... there's no requirement on the holders to do anything really.. If they choose to they could have (in the ARIN region) signed a LRSA, but that's even been removed, in favor of the now much more watered down RSA.

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 10:29 AM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

Matt -

Chris is correct. Those who received IPv4 address blocks by InterNIC (or its predecessors) prior to the inception of ARIN on 22 December 1997 are legacy resource holders, and continue to receive those same registry services for those blocks (Whois, reverse DNS, ability to update) without any need for an agreement with ARIN. This has been provided without any fee to the original registrants (or their legal successors) as recognition of their contributions to the early Internet.

Hey John, I understand that, however my understanding is that the establishment of an ARIN RSA is required prior to the transfer of a block or a portion or a block via ARIN (such as the transfer of 44.192/10). Thus, this would mean that the 44/8 block is now governed by an (well, more than one, now that it's split) ARIN RSA (or LRSA) whereas it was not before. Is that not correct? Thanks!

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 10:41 AM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 19 Jul 2019, at 11:34 AM, Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

Hey John, I understand that, however my understanding is that the establishment of an ARIN RSA is required prior to the transfer of a block or a portion or a block via ARIN (such as the transfer of 44.192/10). Thus, this would mean that the 44/8 block is now governed by an (well, more than one, now that it's split) ARIN RSA (or LRSA) whereas it was not before. Is that not correct?

Matt -

ARIN doesn’t discuss details of specific registrations publicly; you need to refer any such questions to the registrant.

Without discussing any specific registration whatsoever, my understanding is that what I stated is the case as a matter of policy. Was just looking for confirmation that my reading of ARIN policy docs was not incorrect. :) Thanks!

I think there is a key misconception here. The original IANA delegation to “Amateur Radio Digital Communication” was not to any organization with such a name, but was a statement of the purpose of the delegation. An individual who initiated the process took on the administration of the block in trust on behalf of the global amateur radio community. At the time of this allocation, there was only one global IP address registry and no such thing as an RIR. The subsequent formation of an organization by that name and transfer of administrative control into that organization went largely without objection by the amateur radio community because: 1. Most of us probably didn’t even know it happened. 2. Those that did likely expected this organization to continue as previous administrators in trust on behalf of the community. From my perspective, the delegation of a large block to CAIDA for an unrelated purpose now looks like an initial test of “can we get away with this”. I honestly don’t know who is behind ARDC (the organization), but some of the names bandied about are people I know and believe to be deserving of the benefit of the doubt. As such, I’m still trying to learn more before I go full tilt hostile on this, but it seems to me that something is definitely rotten in the state here. Once I have a few more facts (or believe I’m unlikely to be able to get them), I’ll be filing a fraud report with ARIN. I encourage others with any relevant information or knowledge of the history of 44/8 to do the same. Owen

On Jul 19, 2019, at 08:34, Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

...

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 10:29 AM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

...

Matt -

Chris is correct. Those who received IPv4 address blocks by InterNIC (or its predecessors) prior to the inception of ARIN on 22 December 1997 are legacy resource holders, and continue to receive those same registry services for those blocks (Whois, reverse DNS, ability to update) without any need for an agreement with ARIN. This has been provided without any fee to the original registrants (or their legal successors) as recognition of their contributions to the early Internet.

Hey John, I understand that, however my understanding is that the establishment of an ARIN RSA is required prior to the transfer of a block or a portion or a block via ARIN (such as the transfer of 44.192/10). Thus, this would mean that the 44/8 block is now governed by an (well, more than one, now that it's split) ARIN RSA (or LRSA) whereas it was not before. Is that not correct?

Thanks!

----- Original Message -----

From: "William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us>

Personally I've never heard of ARDC.

Amateur Radio Digital Communications is the name that's been on 44/8 every time I've ever looked at the /8 list, which goes back 2 decades or more. I never assumed it was an organization at the time. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274

The biggest tragedy here is that Amazon now have yet another block of IPv4 which means the migration to IPv6 will be further delayed by them and people who "can't see the need" because their AWS server instance can get an IPv4 address. All of this puts more pressure on the access networks to keep IPv4 running and inflates the price of the remaining IPv4 addresses. We need to be pulling together to make https://ipv4flagday.net/ a reality. No more IPv4. Aled On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 at 12:35, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 9:26 PM Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

...

----- Original Message -----

...

From: "William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us>

...

Personally I've never heard of ARDC.

Amateur Radio Digital Communications is the name that's been on 44/8 every time I've ever looked at the /8 list, which goes back 2 decades or more.

I never assumed it was an organization at the time.

Yeah... It just seems like holding an asset in trust for a population and selling that asset without consulting that population (or at least consulting the organizations the population commonly understands to represent them) is very fishy business.

Having read their explanation, I think the folks involved had good reasons and the best intentions but this stinks like fraud to me. Worse, it looks like ARIN was complicit in the fraud -- encouraging and then supporting the folks involved as they established a fiefdom of their own rather than integrating with the organizations that existed. The "appearance of impropriety" is then magnified by ARIN deeming the matter a private transaction between it and the alleged registrants to which the pubic is not entitled to a detailed accounting.

Regards, Bill Herrin

-- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

On Jul 21, 2019, at 12:28 , Sabri Berisha <sabri@cluecentral.net> wrote:

----- On Jul 21, 2019, at 4:48 AM, nanog nanog@nanog.org wrote:

Hi,

...

All of this puts more pressure on the access networks to keep IPv4 running and inflates the price of the remaining IPv4 addresses.

Exactly. Which means that the problem will solve itself.

Why is it taking so long to get IPv6 adopted? I'll tell you why: because the cost does not outweigh the benefits at this time. To /you/ they may, but to the average corporate bean counter they don't. Money and resources spent on an IPv6 study and migration project today, will not provide an ROI tomorrow. They will /maybe/ provide a modest ROI in a few years from now, if any. So why would an SVP of Platform Engineering spend his budget on IPv6?

Only when it becomes cheaper to go IPv6 than to use legacy V4 will V6 be adopted by large corporations. Well, the ones that are governed by beancounters instead of engineers. And by that time, I'll be charging $500/hr to assist $CORP with their IPv6 migration plans.

I can guarantee you that Akamai is very much run by beancounters in addition to engineers. I have first hand experience with that. I can also assure you that it’s quite unlikely that any of Comcast, Netflix, Facebook, Google, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon just to name a few of the biggest are managed without due consideration of input from the bean counters. (I’d bet at each of those companies, the day that engineer beats beancounter in a disagreement is rare, indeed). Each and every one of those large companies has deployed IPv6. Some to a greater extent than others. Facebook and T-Mo stand out as the prime examples, having gone all-IPv6 in as much of their network as practicable today. The problem with the approach you are taking to IPv6 cost-benefit analysis is that your claim of no ROI doesn’t actually hold true. The cost savings from a full-on deployment of IPv6 and moving to IPv4 as a service at the edge can be significant. They are hard to capture without very good cost accounting and the problem really tends to be that engineers are lousy cost-accountants and good cost accountants have a hard time understanding what IPv6 brings to the table. It’s also true that some fraction (though now diminishing) of the ROI from a v6 deployment cannot be realized until some other parties also deploy IPv6, but there’s good news on that front, too… More and more of those parties are realizing the need to deploy IPv6. Owen

I can guarantee you that Akamai is very much run by beancounters in addition to engineers. I have first hand experience with that.

I can also assure you that it’s quite unlikely that any of Comcast, Netflix, Facebook, Google, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon just to name a few of the biggest are managed without >due consideration of input from the bean counters. (I’d bet at each of those companies, the day that engineer beats beancounter in a disagreement is rare, indeed).

Each and every one of those large companies has deployed IPv6. Some to a greater extent than others. Facebook and T-Mo stand out as the prime examples, having gone all->IPv6 in as much of their network as practicable today.

The problem with the approach you are taking to IPv6 cost-benefit analysis is that your claim of no ROI doesn’t actually hold true.

The cost savings from a full-on deployment of IPv6 and moving to IPv4 as a service at the edge can be significant. They are hard to capture without very good cost accounting >and the problem really tends to be that engineers are lousy cost-accountants and good cost accountants have a hard time understanding what IPv6 brings to the table.

It’s also true that some fraction (though now diminishing) of the ROI from a v6 deployment cannot be realized until some other parties also deploy IPv6, but there’s good news >on that front, too… More and more of those parties are realizing the need to deploy IPv6.

Owen

The common denominator for all of the companies listed is the size of their deployment. The carriers needed to handle very large scale mobile networks that they could not possibly get a large enough allocation for. The alternative CGN gear would have doubtless been extremely expensive as well. They also have the engineering and financial horsepower to hold their suppliers to the fire to make all of the devices together well with v6. Another advantage they have is that the lifespan of a mobile device and it's infrastructure is pretty short so they are not dealing with a lot of legacy devices. It helped a lot that the v4 allocations were drying up at around the same time that the mobile networks were in full upgrade mode deploying 4G and LTE. Facebook, Google, and Netflix deployed v6 mostly because there were so many mobile devices using it that it could not be ignored. These are all market/financial forces at work, not some pioneering engineering drive. In the corporate world we have to provide a reason to spend money so unless there is a business drive to deploy v6, it's not going to happen. That pressure is mounting but not at a breaking point yet. The two main pressures would be the cost of expanding into more v4 space and what your customers want. The move to cloud based services means that the corporate demand for v4 space is actually decreasing since they are not hosting as many Internet facing applications as they once were. They don't need to move to v6 since their cloud providers are doing it for them. There is also a move in a lot of corporate networks to get away from dedicated circuits and use the Internet as transport. As this happens, the corporate network does not even care that the service provider is using v6 transport to carry a tunnel. V4 vs v6 becomes a non-issue over time and the pressure to change everything over to v6 goes away since the v4 space is not growing. Steven Naslund Chicago IL

I’ll add to this in saying that I’m a qualified amateur radio licensed Two issues: I’ve been denied access to the space twice. Commercial entities are advertising within the space that are not amateur related. The fish smell permeates.... On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 07:34 William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 9:26 PM Jay R. Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

...

----- Original Message -----

...

From: "William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us>

...

Personally I've never heard of ARDC.

Amateur Radio Digital Communications is the name that's been on 44/8 every time I've ever looked at the /8 list, which goes back 2 decades or more.

I never assumed it was an organization at the time.

Yeah... It just seems like holding an asset in trust for a population and selling that asset without consulting that population (or at least consulting the organizations the population commonly understands to represent them) is very fishy business.

Having read their explanation, I think the folks involved had good reasons and the best intentions but this stinks like fraud to me. Worse, it looks like ARIN was complicit in the fraud -- encouraging and then supporting the folks involved as they established a fiefdom of their own rather than integrating with the organizations that existed. The "appearance of impropriety" is then magnified by ARIN deeming the matter a private transaction between it and the alleged registrants to which the pubic is not entitled to a detailed accounting.

Regards, Bill Herrin

-- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

On 21 Jul 2019, at 7:32 AM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

Having read their explanation, I think the folks involved had good reasons and the best intentions but this stinks like fraud to me. Worse, it looks like ARIN was complicit in the fraud -- encouraging and then supporting the folks involved as they established a fiefdom of their own rather than integrating with the organizations that existed.

Bill - ARIN routinely deals situations where the point of contact for a number resource did not have a formal organization at the time of issuance of the IP address block, and we are quite careful to make sure that the appropriate pedigree is maintained. It is important to realize that ARIN doesn’t automatically consider the responsible contact to be authoritative for an early assignment for any change requested (i.e. an early administrative contact cannot simply usurp an address block for any purpose they desire) but we do indeed recognize organization changes (such as incorporation) that are consistent with the original listed registrant and supported by the current administrative contact for the resource. As you are aware, there are individuals and businesses who operate as a “Doing Business As/DBA" or on behalf on an unincorporated organization at the time of issuance; it is a more common occurrence than one might imagine, and we have to deal with the early registrations appropriately based on the particular circumstance. ARIN promptly put processes in place so that such registrations, having been made on behalf of a particular purpose or organization, do not get misappropriated to become rights solely of the point of contact held for personal gain – indeed, there are cases where organizations are created with similar names for the purposes of hijacking number resources, but such cases don’t generally involve principles who were involved in the administration of the resources since issuance nor do they involve formalization of the registrant into a public benefit not-for-profit organization. Despite your assertions, it is not for ARIN to judge whether a given early number resource was issued to the “best” responsible contact/organization for the job; it is our job to simply maintain the registry according the policies set by the IETF and this community – to do anything else would result in haphazard administration and undermine the stability of the entire registry.

The "appearance of impropriety" is then magnified by ARIN deeming the matter a private transaction between it and the alleged registrants to which the pubic is not entitled to a detailed accounting.

As you are aware, Bill, number resource requests to ARIN are private, but the results end up quite visible in the public registry and there is a reporting process if you believe that any change has been made based on fraudulent information. If the folks would like number resource requests (such as transfer requests) to be public when submitted to ARIN, that is also possible, but would require very specific policy directing us accordingly. I do not know if the community would support such a change, but if you are interested in proposing such then you should review <https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/pdp/appendix_b/> for instructions on submission of a policy proposal. Thanks, /John John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers

On 7/22/19 10:16 AM, William Herrin wrote:

Respectfully John, this wasn't a DBA or an individual figuring the org name field on the old email template couldn't be blank. A class-A was allocated to a _purpose_. You've not only allowed but encouraged that valuable resource to be reassigned to an organization, this ARDC, and then treated the organization as a proxy for the purpose. No one asked you to do that. Nothing in the publicly vetted policies demanded that you attach organizations to the purpose-based allocations and certainly nothing demanded that you grant such organizations identical control over the resources as the control possessed by folks who were the intended direct recipients of assignments.

From the outside it kind of looks like someone created an org that didn't exist before but matched the name in whois and said "oh yeah that's ours, says so right there".

On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 11:56 AM andrew.brant via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:

Whatever happened to the entire class E block? I know it's reserved for future use, but sounds like that future is now given that we've exhausted all existing allocations.

The IPv6 loonies killed all IETF proposals to convert it to unicast space. It remains reserved/unusable. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

The fundamental reason given, from several sources, was that our experience with IPv4 address trading says that no matter how many IPv4 addresses we create or recover, we won't obviate the need for a replacement protocol. The reasons for that are two: (1) IPv4 isn't forward compatible with anything (if it had a TLV or equivalent for the address, we could have simply extended the address), and (2) 2^32 is a finite number less than the number of addressable entities in the world. Yes, it would be interesting to use Class E as unicast space. The instant we make it possible, it will be bought up by companies and countries desperate to delay their IPv6 deployment - and we will then, once again, be out of IPv4 space. We even had a guy write five internet drafts about how it is possible to enumerate more than 2^n entities with an n bit number. Speaking for myself, I don't see the point. It doesn't solve anything, and I'm not sure it even meaningfully delays anything. The time has come to move to a protocol that allows us to enumerate the set of addressable objects without losing our minds.

On Jul 22, 2019, at 3:04 PM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 11:56 AM andrew.brant via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote: Whatever happened to the entire class E block? I know it's reserved for future use, but sounds like that future is now given that we've exhausted all existing allocations.

The IPv6 loonies killed all IETF proposals to convert it to unicast space. It remains reserved/unusable.

Regards, Bill Herrin

-- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

On Mon Jul 22, 2019 at 06:33:17PM -0400, Paul Timmins wrote:

And after 75 messages, nobody has asked the obvious question. When is ARDC going to acquire IPv6 resources on our behalf? Instead being all worried about legacy resources we're highly underutilizing.

I didn't want to spoil a good history dig but did think why not sell the lot. With over 4x as much money it should be able to pay to replace all the legacy kit/software using 44 with stuff doing v6. When the regulator takes spectrum away for others often the others pay the cost of clearing incumbents off. However I've become a v6 idiot as I'd rather we stop dragging this out and get everyone on v6 sooner. Recycling v4 is just time wasting for the convenience of a few rich people and transferring operational problem of scarce v4 onto the less well funded. brandon (G1OZZ and provider of uk 44 gateway through GB7BBC and friends from 1995 to 2006)

I really just want to know how I can purchase some more of that 44. space :) On 7/23/19 10:56 AM, Naslund, Steve wrote:

How about this? If you guys think your organization (club, group of friends, neighborhood association, whatever...) got screwed over by the ARDC, then why not apply for your own v6 allocation. You would then have complete control over its handling and never have to worry about it again. If you are not sure how to get started, visit ARINs website. It is not that difficult or expensive and it would not be hard to justify.

Steven Naslund Chicago IL

...

And after 75 messages, nobody has asked the obvious question. When is ARDC going to acquire IPv6 resources on our behalf? Instead being all worried about legacy resources >we're highly underutilizing.

Ham Radio is supposed to be about pushing the art forward. Let's do that.

-KC8QAY

Yeah because v6 only is the answer plus tour assuming all of these clubs have routers and BGP and the money to get an allocation and ASN.... On 23 Jul 2019, at 22:59, Naslund, Steve <SNaslund@medline.com> wrote: How about this? If you guys think your organization (club, group of friends, neighborhood association, whatever...) got screwed over by the ARDC, then why not apply for your own v6 allocation. You would then have complete control over its handling and never have to worry about it again. If you are not sure how to get started, visit ARINs website. It is not that difficult or expensive and it would not be hard to justify. Steven Naslund Chicago IL

And after 75 messages, nobody has asked the obvious question. When is ARDC going to acquire IPv6 resources on our behalf? Instead being all worried about legacy resources >we're highly underutilizing.

Ham Radio is supposed to be about pushing the art forward. Let's do that.

-KC8QAY

So, if ARIN allocates a v6 assignment to ARDC how do you plan to use it without a router or BGP. Whether it's v4 or v6 you need to route it somewhere. If you have a PC, you can have a router and if you don't have a PC you probably don't need to worry about any of this. If your club can't afford the address allocation then you are probably in too expensive a hobby. That is one of the cheaper things you need to get to do radio data. Steven Naslund Chicago IL

Yeah because v6 only is the answer plus tour assuming all of these clubs have routers and BGP and the money to get an allocation and ASN....

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 9:57 AM Naslund, Steve <SNaslund@medline.com> wrote:

How about this? If you guys think your organization (club, group of friends, neighborhood association, whatever...) got screwed over by the ARDC, then why not apply for your own v6 allocation. You would then have complete

They could likely just use Link-Local V6 space if they wanted. Digital linking using space from the 44/8 block would very likely often be at 1200 or 9600 baud for many uses. Each bit of overhead expensive, and IPv6 with its much greater overhead would seem uniquely Unsuitable and not a viable replacement for IPv4 usage in cases. I'm curious how does a "Point of Contact" change from a Point of Contact to the general organization, to "Owner of a resource"? My general assumption is one does not follow from the other --- for example, Amazon might designate an Admin POC for their /10, But by no means does that confer a right to that individual to auction Amazon's /10, sell the block, and decide how the sales proceeds will be used. Its not even that the registry should allow this and say "Well, Amazon, tough.. if you didn't want it sold by $POC or their successor against your wishes, then you should have appointed a better POC." I would anticipate the registry requiring legal documents from $OrgName signed by however many people to verify complete agency over $OrgName or someone making a representation; not just sending an e-mail or pushing a button. And if there is no organization name, then it may just be that there isn't a single person in the world who has been vested with authorization to represent an item registered "for use by a community" or "the public in general" in matters like that. And why should any one organization get to monetize AMPRnet and decide the use of any funds for monetization? They may be a public benefit, but how do you establish they are the _right_ and _only_ public benefit, that the public deems the most proper for advancing development for the greatest public good in IP/digital networking communications? The mention of "Scholarships" and "Grants" to be decided by the board of the entity that seemed to unilaterally decide to "Sell" a shared resource that was provided for free - Sounds like an idea biased towards "academics" and certain kinds of researchers -- as in more most likely university academics --- sounds suspect. Perhaps Scholarships mostly benefit an individual, and Grants could be decided by an entity more well-known and reputable to the community such as one vetted by IARU or ARRL, anyways. Usage from the 44/8 space chosen is not necessarily co-ordinated with nor were AMPR networks created within 44/8 ever required to be approved or co-ordinated by any central registry contacts that were shown for the block, and the AMPR users can simply continue ignoring any IANA changes to 44/8; just like you probably would if some random contact on a registry record decided they were owner, and auctioned off "192.168.0.0/17" reducing the shared 192.168 allocation to 192.168.128.0/17 only. They may simply go by the decisions of whichever user, vendor, or experimenter makes the linking technology in question for deciding the IP address co-ordination --- For example, the Icom or Yaesu network may designate their own addressing authority for users of their digital linking system, and there is a good chance they already do. I think there is a false belief here in the first place that the community in question which is separate from the internet relies upon IANA or ARIN registry information to continue existing or using address space; Or that the contact has any "ownership", "resource holdership", or "network management" purpose, for anything related to 44/8 other than a purpose of co-ordination for a SUBSET of the likely AMPRnet 44/8 users when considering CERTAIN applications of AMPRnet where interoperability with internet was a goal. And 44/8 commonly for discrete isolated networks; similar to RFC1918, But predating RFC1918 by almost two decades. Consider that 10.0.0.0/8 COULD have been a substitute for many 44/8 applications. My understanding is this 44/8 allocation predates the public internet; and its normal everyday usage is completely separate from public internet IP having been actually utilized on this space first. People sought an allocation from IANA originally, but that does not give IANA nor any contact listed by IANA "ownership" or "management" authority over usage of this IP address space outside of their registry which is supposed to accurately cover the internet: but the AMPRnet is Not a block of networks on the internet, and not under the purview of IETF or IANA, anyways --- its just a community that uses TCP/IP mostly in isolated discrete networks which can be neither allocated, nor managed, nor get their individual assignments within 44/8 from any central authority. Although ARDC provides an option to do so --- these users co-ordinating their assignments already get them from ARDC, so the users requiring internet interoperability already stipulate to ARDC's co-ordination. Few projects would likely muster BGP access anyways, and would most likely be NAT'ing any 44/8 space if tunneling over the internet. I'm not sure any change to this ever listed by IANA should actually be recognized by. _other_ AMPRnet users, since there is no impact to isolated networks using this space --- anyone impacted will probably just choose to ignore the registry change and don't really care what "the internet" Whois says about the 44/8. In a way; it just means the IANA registry data became corrupted/Less accurate Due to IANA's failure to clearly state a policy for the maintenance of the allocations and/or ARDC "converting" ownership or being allowed to take up a false pretense of ownership of the registry allocation. -- -JH

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 6:46 PM Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:

Not entirely true. A lot of 44/8 subnets are used for transporting amateur radio information across the internet and/or for certain limited applications linking amateur radio and the internet.

See HamWAN.org for the Seattle area multi-megabit ham network on 44/8 space. -- Joe Hamelin, W7COM, Tulalip, WA, +1 (360) 474-7474

On Jul 23, 2019, at 18:44, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:

Not entirely true. A lot of 44/8 subnets are used for transporting amateur radio information across the internet and/or for certain limited applications linking amateur radio and the internet.

In the mid 90's we (an ISP) announced the space for WI's packet community. If it didn't need internet connectivity, you wouldn't need the IP addresses, necessarily. Also, from the AMPR website: https://www.ampr.org/about/ "We don’t sell addresses; you might consider an AMPRNet allocation to be in the nature of an extended loan of IP space, which is, of course, subject to our Terms of Service." And of course, from: https://www.ampr.org/terms-of-service/

5. What You may not do

You may NOT sell, exchange, transfer, or otherwise obtain anything of value for the address(es). You are not permitted to use the address(es) for commercial purposes, nor in a manner which would be to the detriment of the AMPRNet or to Amateur Radio.

6. What You are agreeing to

All address(es) licensed to You remain the sole and exclusive property of ARDC. You do not obtain any rights, title, or interest in the address(es) nor in the AMPRNet.

You may not assign any monetary value to the addresses. ... 8. Definitions

“Amateur”, “ham”, “operator”, means a person or group licensed under the terms of the Amateur Radio Service as defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as implemented by their country’s government, e.g., in the USA, under 47CFR97.

“AMPRNet” means the network 44/8; that is, all Internet IP addresses from 44.0.0.0 through 44.255.255.255.

And also from: http://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Main_Page

Since its allocation to Amateur Radio in the mid-1980's, Internet network 44 (44.0.0.0/8), known as the AMPRNet™, ... • This page was last edited on 5 April 2014, at 04:32.

They certainly seem to be claiming to have ownership of something not assigned to them, and in conflict with their own stated TOS. What seems additionally strange is that according to the addressing agreement from 1986, according to wikipedia, "The allocation plan agreed in late-1986 mandated 44.0/9 (~8 million addresses) for use within the United States, under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations;[6] and mandated 44.128/9 (~8 million addresses) for the Rest-of-World deployment, outside of FCC regulations.[6]"

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 12:43 PM David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org> wrote:

In some cases, there was a ‘caretaker’ assigned (ARRL for 44/8 and @Home for 24/8) who acted as a pseudo-registry: they did (or at least were supposed to do) sub-assignments for entities that met (IANA- and pseudo-registry-) defined criteria.

Hi David, Did you mean to say ARRL here? If you did, can you explain how 44/8 ended up with an organization unaffiliated with ARRL? One that I'll note: a. Has no public participation (unlike ARRL which has open membership and elections) b. Was established only this decade at ARIN's urging c. Is a 501(c)3 organization which has announced but not yet delivered plans for reducing its administrative overhead from 100%. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

There's already widespread use (abuse ?) of DOD /8's. T-Mobile commonly assigns 26/8 space (and others) to customers and nat's it.   -----Original message----- From:Michel Py <michel.py@tsisemi.com> Sent:Mon 07-22-2019 05:36 pm Subject:RE: 44/8 To:William Herrin <bill@herrin.us>; CC:North American Network Operators‘ Group <nanog@nanog.org>; As an extension of RFC1918, it would have solved the questionable and nevertheless widespread squatting of 30/8 and other un-announced DoD blocks because 10/8 is not big enough for some folks. Michel

...

Michel Py wrote : As an extension of RFC1918, it would have solved the questionable and nevertheless widespread squatting of 30/8 and other un-announced DoD blocks because 10/8 is not big enough for some folks.

Jerry Cloe wrote : There's already widespread use (abuse ?) of DOD /8's. T-Mobile commonly assigns 26/8 space (and others) to customers and nat's it.

They are not the only ones; would probably be faster to count who does not squat than who does. Which makes my point : if we had done it 15 years ago and allocated 240/4 as private unicast, these 268 million addresses would have been enough for most to avoid squatting DoD. This is the last attempt that I remember : https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wilson-class-e-02 Not problem, because IPv6 is going to be deployed in the next two years, right ? that's what I have been hearing for 20 years now. Michel TSI Disclaimer: This message and any files or text attached to it are intended only for the recipients named above and contain information that may be confidential or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not forward, copy, use or otherwise disclose this communication or the information contained herein. In the event you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message, and then delete all copies of it from your system. Thank you!...

On Jul 22, 2019, at 15:33 , Michel Py <michel.py@tsisemi.com> wrote:

...

...

William Herrin wrote : The IPv6 loonies killed all IETF proposals to convert it to unicast space. It remains reserved/unusable.

+1

...

Fred Baker wrote : Speaking for myself, I don't see the point. It doesn't solve anything,

As an extension of RFC1918, it would have solved the questionable and nevertheless widespread squatting of 30/8 and other un-announced DoD blocks because 10/8 is not big enough for some folks.

s/would/might/ s/questionable/objectionable to some/

TSI Disclaimer: This message and any files or text attached to it are intended only for the recipients named above and contain information that may be confidential or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not forward, copy, use or otherwise disclose this communication or the information contained herein. In the event you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message, and then delete all copies of it from your system. Thank you!...

Oh, please… You posted it to a public mailing list. TSI’s lawyers need a reality check. Owen

I think the Class E block has been covered before. There were two reasons to not re-allocate it. 1. A lot of existing code base does not know how to handle those addresses and may refuse to route them or will otherwise mishandle them. 2. It was decided that squeezing every bit of space out of the v4 allocations only served to delay the desired v6 deployment. This is my recollection and might be flawed. Steven Naslund Chicago IL

Whatever happened to the entire class E block? I know it's reserved for future use, but sounds like that future is now given that we've exhausted all existing >allocations.

On Jul 22, 2019, at 12:15 , Naslund, Steve <SNaslund@medline.com> wrote:

I think the Class E block has been covered before. There were two reasons to not re-allocate it.

1. A lot of existing code base does not know how to handle those addresses and may refuse to route them or will otherwise mishandle them. 2. It was decided that squeezing every bit of space out of the v4 allocations only served to delay the desired v6 deployment.

Close, but there is a subtle error… 2. It was decided that the effort to modify each and every IP stack in order to facilitate use of this relatively small block (16 /8s being evaluated against a global run rate at the time of roughly 2.5 /8s per month, mostly to RIPE and APNIC) vs. putting that same effort into modifying each and every IP stack to support IPv6 was an equation of very small benefit for slightly smaller cost. (Less than 8 additional months of IPv4 free pool vs. hopefully making IPv6 deployable before IPv4 ran out). Owen

This is my recollection and might be flawed.

Steven Naslund Chicago IL

...

Whatever happened to the entire class E block? I know it's reserved for future use, but sounds like that future is now given that we've exhausted all existing >allocations.

On Jul 22, 2019, at 20:14 , Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@swm.pp.se> wrote:

On Mon, 22 Jul 2019, Owen DeLong wrote:

...

2. It was decided that the effort to modify each and every IP stack in order to facilitate use of this relatively small block (16 /8s being evaluated against a global run rate at the time of roughly 2.5 /8s per month, mostly to RIPE and APNIC) vs. putting that same effort into modifying each and every IP stack to support IPv6 was an equation of very small benefit for slightly smaller cost. (Less than 8 additional months of IPv4 free pool vs. hopefully making IPv6 deployable before IPv4 ran out).

Well, people are working on making 240/4 usable in IP stacks:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dtaht/unicast-extensions/master/rfcs/draft...

There have been patches accepted into some BSDs and into Linux tools/kernel and other operating systems to make 240/4 configurable and working as unicast space.

I don't expect it to show up in DFZ anytime soon, but some people have dilligently been working on removing any obstacles to using 240/4 in most common operating systems.

For controlled environments, it's probably deployable today with some caveats. I think it'd be fine as a compliment to RFC1918 space for some internal networks.

-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

I guess people can do whatever they want. I personally consider it to be a sad sad waste of time that could be better spent deploying IPv6 to more places. Owen

Editor's note: This draft has not been submitted to any formal process. It may change significantly if it is ever submitted. You are reading it because we trust you and we value your opinions. *Please do not recirculate it.* Please join us in testing patches and equipment!

(emphasis mine) Interesting choice to host it in a public Github repo, then... On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 11:17 PM Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@swm.pp.se> wrote:

On Mon, 22 Jul 2019, Owen DeLong wrote:

...

2. It was decided that the effort to modify each and every IP

stack in order to facilitate use of this relatively small block (16 /8s being evaluated against a global

...

run rate at the time of roughly 2.5 /8s per month, mostly

to RIPE and APNIC) vs. putting that same effort into modifying each and every IP stack to support

...

IPv6 was an equation of very small benefit for slightly

smaller cost. (Less than 8 additional months of IPv4 free pool vs. hopefully making IPv6 deployable

...

before IPv4 ran out).

Well, people are working on making 240/4 usable in IP stacks:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dtaht/unicast-extensions/master/rfcs/draft...

There have been patches accepted into some BSDs and into Linux tools/kernel and other operating systems to make 240/4 configurable and working as unicast space.

I don't expect it to show up in DFZ anytime soon, but some people have dilligently been working on removing any obstacles to using 240/4 in most common operating systems.

For controlled environments, it's probably deployable today with some caveats. I think it'd be fine as a compliment to RFC1918 space for some internal networks.

-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

On 2019-07-22 6:09 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

...

On Jul 22, 2019, at 12:15 , Naslund, Steve <SNaslund@medline.com <mailto:SNaslund@medline.com>> wrote:

I think the Class E block has been covered before.  There were two reasons to not re-allocate it. 1.A lot of existing code base does not know how to handle those addresses and may refuse to route them or will otherwise mishandle them. 2.It was decided that squeezing every bit of space out of the v4 allocations only served to delay the desired v6 deployment.

Close, but there is a subtle error…

2.It was decided that the effort to modify each and every IP stack in order to facilitate use of this relatively small block (16 /8s being evaluated against a global run rate at the time of roughly 2.5 /8s per month, mostly to RIPE and APNIC) vs. putting that same effort into modifying each and every IP stack to support IPv6 was an equation of very small benefit for slightly smaller cost. (Less than 8 additional months of IPv4 free pool vs. hopefully making IPv6 deployable before IPv4 ran out).

All of this, plus what Fred Baker said upthread. When I was running the IANA in the early 2000's we discussed this issue with many different experts, hardware company reps, etc. Not only was there a software issue that was insurmountable for all practical purposes (pretty much every TCP/IP stack has "Class E space is not unicast" built in), in the case of basically all network hardware, this limitation is also in the silicon. So even if it were possible to fix the software issue, it would not be possible to fix the hardware issue without replacing pretty much all the hardware. ... and even if some magical forces appeared and gave every open source software project, and every company, and every consumer in the developed world the means and opportunity to do all of the above; doing so would have left the developing world out in the cold, since in many cases there is reliance on older, second/third/fourth hand equipment that they could never afford to replace. So the decision was made to start tooting the IPv4 runout horns in the hopes that folks would start taking conservation of the space seriously (which happened more often than not), and accelerate the adoption of IPv6. *cough* Personally, I also pushed to bring IPv6 support from ICANN up to par, including going the last mile on putting the IPv6 addresses of the root servers in the zone, creating and socializing a long-term plan for allocating to the RIRs, etc. So no, there were exactly zero "IPv6 loons" involved in this decision. :-) Doug

On 2019-07-26 10:07 PM, William Herrin wrote:

...

When I was running the IANA in the early 2000's we discussed this issue with many different experts, hardware company reps, etc. Not only was there a software issue that was insurmountable for all

On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 9:21 PM Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us <mailto:dougb@dougbarton.us>> wrote: practical purposes (pretty much every TCP/IP stack has "Class E space is not unicast" built in), in the case of basically all network hardware, this limitation is also in the silicon. So even if it were possible to fix the software issue, it would not be possible to fix the hardware issue without replacing pretty much all the hardware.

...

So the decision was made to start tooting the IPv4 runout horns in the hopes that folks would start taking conservation of the space seriously (which happened more often than not), and accelerate the adoption of IPv6. *cough*

Hi Doug,

That's what you wrote. Here's what I read:

"We decided keep this mile of road closed because you can't drive it anywhere unless the toll road operators in the next 10 miles open their roads too. What's that you say? Your house is a quarter mile down this road?** La la la I can't hear you. Look, just use the shiny new road we built over in the next state instead. Move your house there. The roads are better."

** Not every unicast use of 240/4 would require broad adoption of the change. Your reasoning that it does is so absurd as to merit outright mockery.

...

So no, there were exactly zero "IPv6 loons" involved in this decision. :-)

No, when I said IPv6 loonies, reasoning of this character was pretty much what I was talking about.

So leaving aside how interesting I find the fact that you snipped the part of my comments that you did, the utter absurdity of your toll road analogy shows me that I will not be able to convince you of anything. So I'll just say this ... if you think that the advice I received from all of the many people I spoke to (all of whom are/were a lot smarter than me on this topic) was wrong, and that putting the same LOE into IPv6 adoption that it would have taken to make Class E usable was a better investment because we're not running out of IPv6 any time soon, then you have a golden opportunity. Go forth and prove me wrong. Go rally support from all of the people and companies that you need in order to make any part of  Class E usable for any purpose (even, as you point it, if it's not for global unicast). If you're right, and I'm wrong, your income potential is essentially limitless. Or, look at it from another perspective. If you're right, then why, in the last almost 15 years, has no one figured out how to do it yet? Including the companies whose mission is to sell us new hardware, and force us into contracts for software upgrades in order to keep said hardware on the 'net? It's easy to sit back in the cheap seats and squawk about how "they" are out to get you. I'd be far more impressed if you put your money (or time, or effort) where your mouth is. Doug

On 2019-07-26 11:01 PM, William Herrin wrote:

On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 10:36 PM Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us <mailto:dougb@dougbarton.us>> wrote:

...

So I'll just say this ... if you think that the advice I received from all of the many people I spoke to (all of whom are/were a lot smarter than me on this topic) was wrong, and that putting the same LOE into IPv6 adoption that it would have taken to make Class E usable was a better investment

Doug,

"Better investment?" What on earth makes you think it's a zero-sum game?

Because for all of us there are only 24 hours in a day, and the people who would have needed to do the work to make it happen were telling me that they were going to put the work into IPv6 instead, because it has a future. As Owen pointed out, no matter how much IPv4 space you added, all it would do would be delay the inevitable.

"Same level of effort?" A reasonable level of effort was adding the word "unicast" to the word "reserved" in the standards. Seven letters. A space. Maybe a comma. I don't recall seeing your draft on that .... refresh my memory? That would have unblocked everybody else to apply however much or little effort they cared to. Here we are nearly 20 years later and had you not fumbled that ball 240/4 might be broadly enough supported to usefully replace the word "reserved" with something else. You give me /way /too much credit on that. I was the reed tasting the wind on this topic. I was not the wind. I (like every other IANA manager) had exactly zero authority to say, "You SHALL NOT pursue making Class E space usable for anything!" The opportunity existed then, and still exists today, for anyone to make it work. You're right about one thing: you won't be able to convince me that your conclusion was rational. No matter how many smart people say a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing.

So as my last word on the topic, I return you to the point above, that whatever the discussion was 20 years ago, there is still no workable solution. If you'd like another perspective, here is a reasonably good summary: https://packetlife.net/blog/2010/oct/14/ipv4-exhaustion-what-about-class-e-a... Doug

In article <23868.39953.398906.559231@gargle.gargle.HOWL> you write:

Not particularly interested in arguing for using Class E space but this "not compatible" reasoning would seem to have applied to IPv6 in the early 2000s (whatever, pick an earlier date when little supported IPv6) just as well, pretty much.

Right. A point that's been made about a hundred times already is that the effort to add class E to the IPv4 space is the same as the effort to support IPv6, so why waste time with class E? R's, John

On 7/27/19 2:18 PM, Randy Bush wrote:

something is broken on the nanog list. usually we have this discussion twice a year. this time it may have been a couple of years gap. what broke?

44/8. Sucked up all the oxygen.

On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 12:24 PM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

...

Nothing in the publicly vetted policies demanded that you attach organizations to the purpose-based allocations

You’ve suggested that this network was some special “purpose-based” allocation, but failed to point to any actual policy guidance that distinguishes it in that manner.

John, As admitted at https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/, Hank Magnuski and Jon Postel thought it was a swell idea and simply did it. If you have a different interpretation of that history, one that involves Hank Magnuski and his successors having some kind of ownership of the block independent of its purpose, I'd love to hear it. As I recall, you were specifically asked to provide such an interpretation earlier in this thread but explained that ARIN doesn't comment on individual assignments. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

So wall of text, but here is the RFC chain. Hank Magnuski was the original person marked as the 'reference', which is interpreted as 'responsible individual' in these documents. This changed in 1987, when Philip R. Karn was now reflected in that field. The last RFC I can find that explicitly calls out 44.0.0.0/8 was 1166 , July 1990, again with Phil Karn as the reference, or responsible individual. ========== Original assignment of 44 in RFC 790 : Sept 1981 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc790 ... 044.rrr.rrr.rrr AMPRNET Amature Radio Experiment Net [HM] 044.rrr.rrr.rrr-126.rrr.rrr.rrr Unassigned [JBP] ... [HM] Hank Magnuski --- JOSE@PARC-MAXC ========== Ambiguity corrected in RFC 820: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc820 ... R 044.rrr.rrr.rrr AMPRNET Amateur Radio Experiment Net[HM] R 045.rrr.rrr.rrr T C3-PR Testbed Development PRNET [BG5] ... [HM] Hank Magnuski --- JOSE@PARC-MAXC ========== Maintains references to "Amateur Radio Experiment Net" through multiple RFCs: 870 900 923 943 960 990 997 ========== Reference field changes from [HM] to [PK28] in RFC 1020 : Nov 1987 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1020 [PK28] Philip R. Karn, Jr. BCR Karn@FLASH.BELLCORE.COM ========== "Amateur Radio Experiment Net" disappears, only AMPRNET listed in RFC 1166 : https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1166 ... R*43.rrr.rrr.rrr JAPAN-A [JM292] R 44.rrr.rrr.rrr AMPRNET [PK28] 45.rrr.rrr.rrr Reserved [NIC] ... ========== RFC 1166 Updated by RFC 5737, creation of documentation blocks. No references to 44/8. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5737 ========== On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 3:49 PM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 22 Jul 2019, at 3:35 PM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 12:24 PM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

...

...

Nothing in the publicly vetted policies demanded that you attach organizations to the purpose-based allocations

You’ve suggested that this network was some special “purpose-based” allocation, but failed to point to any actual policy guidance that distinguishes it in that manner.

John,

As admitted at https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/, Hank Magnuski and Jon Postel thought it was a swell idea and simply did it.

Bill -

In which case, I’d recommend contacting Hank Magnuski to obtain documentation of your particular interpretation, as there are no published policy documents which indicate anything other than an allocation from the general purpose IPv4 space for an "amateur packet radio" research network (and in particular nothing that would indicate that stewardship over the allocation should rest with any party other than the assigned contact for the block.)

Thanks! /John

John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers

The change in character/purpose of the network has operational impacts to me, and as such should have been done as an IANA action (as the original purpose was arguably also set by IANA action, when IANA was Jon Postel, and simply not documented very well): I am the network administrator for a 501(c)(3) amateur radio club that operates a digital microwave network licensed via FCC Part 101 (commercial microwave), FCC Part 15 ("unlicensed" ISM) and FCC Part 97 (amateur radio). The Part 97 links are, by law, restricted to amateur radio uses. One way to ensure this is to filter based on the fact that 44.0.0.0/8 is for international amateur radio use only. That has changed as a result of ARIN's consent to a "transfer" to an entity that will not be using these for the originally stated purpose. We have a /23 allocated within 44.0.0.0/8 and it is likely that as we expand we will need additional address space, so the transfer of some of the unallocated space is of concern for that reason as well. What *should* have happened at the time of the formation of ARIN and the other regional registries is that either 1) the 44.0.0.0/8 block have been delegated to a special-purpose RIR incorporated to manage the amateur radio allocations within this block (which is what ampr.org has been doing, but not as an IANA-recognized community-managed RIR); or 2) the 44.0.0.0/8 block have been delegated to another RIR (e.g., ARIN) that could have special policies applicable only to that block and managed by the community. I would guess that in either case, the odds that the community would have decided to peel off 1/4 of the space and sell it to a commercial entity would have been low, and that the odds that IANA would have agreed to go along with such a thing at least as low. Instead we're here, because ARIN treated "Amateur Radio Digital Communications" not as a purpose (that happened to not be documented well via RFC or other process) but as an organization name that anyone could adopt, given sufficient documentation. Despite the fact that the block was already being used in a way that you'd expect an RIR to be behaving, not the way the organization has behaved. Again, I'm sure that this was all well-intentioned... but nobody from ARDC asked any of the hams like me who've been sending TCP/IP over ham radio since it was possible, and have active allocations within the 44 net what we thought about this idea. And nobody from ARIN asked us if we thought ARDC was a suitable proxy for our interests in the special use of the space either when the registration was transferred to the corporation or when the registration stopped being used solely for its original purpose. That's why a real RIR for this space would have had a policy development process where *the community* could weigh in on ideas like "sell of 1/4 of it so we can have a big endowment". Which, heck, we might have all agreed to... if there was some transparency. Matthew Kaufman On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 12:26 PM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 22 Jul 2019, at 1:16 PM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

...

Respectfully John, this wasn't a DBA or an individual figuring the org

name field on the old email template couldn't be blank. A class-A was allocated to a _purpose_.

Bill -

The block in question is a /8 research assignment made with a particular network name and a particular responsible technical contact, just as so many other research networks during that period; indeed, if that is what you meant by “purpose”, then you are correct. Like so many of those early research networks, the evolution of the block over time was under control of the contact listed in the registry, and resulted in some being returned, some ending up with commercial firms, some with not-for-profit entities, etc.

In the case of AMRPNET, in 2011 ARIN did approve update of the registration to a public benefit not-for-profit at the request of the registered contact.

...

You've not only allowed but encouraged that valuable resource to be reassigned to an organization, this ARDC, and then treated the organization as a proxy for the purpose. No one asked you to do that.

Again, ARIN was specifically requested to do exactly that by the authoritative contact, and it was correct to proceed given that the IP block was a general purpose IP address block absent any other policy guidance.

...

Nothing in the publicly vetted policies demanded that you attach organizations to the purpose-based allocations

You’ve suggested that this network was some special “purpose-based” allocation, but failed to point to any actual policy guidance that distinguishes it in that manner. Note that we do have many such documents that identify a variety of purpose-based allocations – for example, RFC 5737 ("IPv4 Address Blocks Reserved for Documentation”), RFC 6598 for 'Shared Address Space' for CGN, etc. If you do have a IETF or IANA policy document applicable to AMPRNET that somehow has been overlooked, please provide it to ARIN as part of an Internet number resource fraud report, and we will promptly review and investigate.

In the meantime, if you are curious about the actual IPv4 special-purpose assignments, you can find the complete list here: https://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-ipv4-special-registry/iana-ipv4-specia... – there’s quite a few, but AMPRNET is not one of them.

Thanks, /John

John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers

On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 1:36 PM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 22 Jul 2019, at 4:17 PM, Matthew Kaufman <matthew@matthew.at> wrote:

...

That's why a real RIR for this space would have had a policy development process where *the community* could weigh in on ideas like "sell of 1/4 of it so we can have a big endowment". Which, heck, we might have all agreed to... if there was some transparency.

Those are excellent questions for ADCR regarding its governance and accountability plans, but again, none of that requires any special “RIR” magic to accomplish; it simply takes a not-for-profit organization that serves its community – such entities are quite common but they require an active and engaged community and appropriate governance structures.

There's a bit of magic. If ARIN's board of directors decided to up and start taking people's existing IPv4 allocations and selling them to Amazon to beef up the ARIN scholarship fund, the recourse would include going to IANA and noting that ARIN was no longer behaving as a responsible registrar for the global community it serves. Here the amateur radio community has noted that ARDC's board of directors has decided to up and start taking people's existing IPv4 allocations (including a /15 in use by the German amateur radio community) and selling them to Amazon to beef up the ARDC grant fund (without engaging with the global community of radio amateurs who thought that net 44 was being held in trust for them, or engaging with even those entities/individuals who'd already been allocated address space in the block). But because ARDC isn't actually an IP address registrar of global IP space for its community as delegated by IANA, we're left with grasping at ARIN for some accountability here. Matthew Kaufman

On Jul 22, 2019, at 14:03 , John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 22 Jul 2019, at 4:44 PM, Matthew Kaufman <matthew@matthew.at> wrote:

...

... There's a bit of magic. If ARIN's board of directors decided to up and start taking people's existing IPv4 allocations and selling them to Amazon to beef up the ARIN scholarship fund, the recourse would include going to IANA and noting that ARIN was no longer behaving as a responsible registrar for the global community it serves.

Hmm – a rather interesting thought exercise. Rather than belabor the point, I shall simply suggest that in such circumstances you might find yourself far better making use of mechanisms available both in the ARIN bylaws (and under Virginia state law for a non-stock membership organization) to address such a matter, but that’s based on my perhaps imperfect knowledge of the situation...

...

Here the amateur radio community has noted that ARDC's board of directors has decided to up and start taking people's existing IPv4 allocations (including a /15 in use by the German amateur radio community) and selling them to Amazon to beef up the ARDC grant fund (without engaging with the global community of radio amateurs who thought that net 44 was being held in trust for them, or engaging with even those entities/individuals who'd already been allocated address space in the block). But because ARDC isn't actually an IP address registrar of global IP space for its community as delegated by IANA, we're left with grasping at ARIN for some accountability here.

It is both touching (and somewhat disquieting) that you view the RIR system being the only available source of community accountability, but it is not correct – ARDC has significant obligations as non-profit public benefit corporation in order to remain a valid legal entity. I imagine that there is now significantly more engagement between the amateur radio community and that organization, and one hopes it can be positively directed to further digital communication by the amateur radio community.

Perhaps, but as I understand it: 1. ARDC cannot undo the transaction. 2. Even if ARDC is forced into non-existence, that does not restore the resources to the Amateur Radio Community. 3. Eliminating ARDC at this point only makes the future of those funds even less likely to serve any valid Amateur Radio Purpose. Thus, ARIN, which runs the registry and does have the ability to invalidate the transaction for fraud upon realizing that ARDC really didn’t have the backing of the community in it’s claim of ownership of the block and the coincidence of the contacts deciding to turn this into a structure they could enrich (and possibly draw a salary from, though I do not know if that is anyone’s intent), and knowing just how to move it through the ARIN process through a rather long game still constitutes a fraudulent misappropriation of the resources in question vs. the community interest in said resources. Owen

On 22 Jul 2019, at 8:47 PM, Valdis Klētnieks <valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:

On Mon, 22 Jul 2019 20:36:40 -0000, John Curran said:

...

There is no such creature as a “special purpose” RIR; Regional Internet Registries serve the general community in a particular geographic regions as described by ICANN ICP-2.

OK, I'll bite then. Which RIR allocates address space to trans-national interests such as the UN or NATO? Given that Matthew Kaufman states a /15 out of 44/8 was allocated to a German organization, it certainly sounds like we're well into transnational territory here.

Valdis - International organizations today get IP address blocks generally from the RIR which serves their headquarters location. Prior to ARIN’s inception, international organizations who obtained address blocks often obtained them from the InterNIC (which handled IP address issuance for all parties not in the RIPE or APNIC regions.) ARIN continued to serve these early registrations upon its formation, and most of those registrations were moved to the appropriate RIR in 2002 as part of the "ERX - Early Registration Transfer Project” <https://www.arin.net/vault/participate/meetings/reports/ARIN_X/PDF/erx.pdf> Hope this helps clarify things somewhat - thanks for asking! /John John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers

On 7/22/19 10:09 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

That would be ARDC, not ADCR, but here’s the problem… As far as most of us are concerned, it was inappropriate for ARIN to hand them control of the block in the first place. We were fine with them doing the record keeping and providing POC services, but we never expected them to be so bold as to simply steal community resources to enrich an organization we never vetted, no matter how well intended. Well here is the rub. ARDC is not technically competent to manage the blocks in the first place. One can see how they bungled the RDNS for 44.0.0.0/9 and 44.128.0.0/10 after the sale causing a world wide 22+ hour outage. Several /16 allocations are still down, over 5 days later due to lame delegation.

$ dig +trace -x 44.25.12.1 ; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> +trace -x 44.25.12.1 ;; global options: +cmd . 3600000 IN NS J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. . 3600000 IN NS H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET. ;; Received 492 bytes from 192.168.8.200#53(192.168.8.200) in 1454 ms

in-addr.arpa. 172800 IN NS a.in-addr-servers.arpa. in-addr.arpa. 172800 IN NS b.in-addr-servers.arpa. in-addr.arpa. 172800 IN NS c.in-addr-servers.arpa. in-addr.arpa. 172800 IN NS d.in-addr-servers.arpa. in-addr.arpa. 172800 IN NS e.in-addr-servers.arpa. in-addr.arpa. 172800 IN NS f.in-addr-servers.arpa. ;; Received 417 bytes from 2001:7fd::1#53(2001:7fd::1) in 1837 ms

44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS x.arin.net. 44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS z.arin.net. 44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS r.arin.net. ;; Received 112 bytes from 2001:dd8:6::101#53(2001:dd8:6::101) in 839 ms

25.44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ampr.org. 25.44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS a.coreservers.uk. 25.44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS munnari.oz.au. 25.44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ampr-dns.in-berlin.de. 25.44.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN NS ns2.threshinc.com. ;; Received 186 bytes from 2001:500:13::63#53(2001:500:13::63) in 5508 ms

25.44.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS c.ns.hamwan.net. 25.44.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS b.ns.hamwan.net. 25.44.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS a.ns.hamwan.net. ;; BAD (HORIZONTAL) REFERRAL ;; Received 102 bytes from 2a00:ed40:4001:1::10#53(2a00:ed40:4001:1::10) in 579 ms

1.12.25.44.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN PTR loopback0.r1.triangle.hamwan.net. ;; Received 87 bytes from 44.24.245.2#53(44.24.245.2) in 99 ms

Someone, anyone, want to get this fixed? The road to hell is paved in good intentions. Hey mama, look at me, I'm on my way to the promised land, whoo! -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice http://bryanfields.net

On Jul 22, 2019, at 10:16 , William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 6:02 AM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net <mailto:jcurran@arin.net>> wrote:

...

On 21 Jul 2019, at 7:32 AM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us <mailto:bill@herrin.us>> wrote:

...

Having read their explanation, I think the folks involved had good reasons and the best intentions but this stinks like fraud to me. Worse, it looks like ARIN was complicit in the fraud -- encouraging and then supporting the folks involved as they established a fiefdom of their own rather than integrating with the organizations that existed.

As you are aware, there are individuals and businesses who operate as a “Doing Business As/DBA" or on behalf on an unincorporated organization at the time of issuance; it is a more common occurrence than one might imagine, and we have to deal with the early registrations appropriately based on the particular circumstance. ARIN promptly put processes in place so that such registrations, having been made on behalf of a particular purpose or organization, do not get misappropriated to become rights solely of the point of contact held for personal gain – indeed, there are cases where organizations are created with similar names for the purposes of hijacking number resources, but such cases don’t generally involve principles who were involved in the administration of the resources since issuance nor do they involve formalization of the registrant into a public benefit not-for-profit organization.

Respectfully John, this wasn't a DBA or an individual figuring the org name field on the old email template couldn't be blank. A class-A was allocated to a _purpose_. You've not only allowed but encouraged that valuable resource to be reassigned to an organization, this ARDC, and then treated the organization as a proxy for the purpose. No one asked you to do that. Nothing in the publicly vetted policies demanded that you attach organizations to the purpose-based allocations and certainly nothing demanded that you grant such organizations identical control over the resources as the control possessed by folks who were the intended direct recipients of assignments.

This is a rare day, indeed, but I find myself largely agreeing with Bill here. The only thing I dispute here is that I’m pretty sure that the principals of ARDC did request ARIN to make ARDC the controlling organization of the resource. The question here is whether or not it was appropriate or correct for ARIN to do so. IMHO, it was not. IMHO, ARIN should have recognized that this particular block was issued for a purpose and not to an organization or individual. That contacts were volunteers from the community that agreed to take on a task. Even if the block ended up contactless, it should not have been open to claim and certainly not to 8.3 or 8.4 partial transfer to another organization away from that purpose. Unfortunately, the incremental way in which this was done probably rendered ARIN staff into a situation similar to the proverbial (and apocryphal) frog in a pot of water. At each step, it probably seemed on the edge, but still appropriate. This was, of course exacerbated by the fact that the community didn’t really notice anything amiss until this last step, because the individuals in question were, by and large, trusted members of the community that appeared to be continuing to act in the community’s interest. Honestly, I doubt most of the community was aware of (I certainly wasn’t) the incorporation of ARDC and the subsequent transfer of control of 44.0.0.0/8 to ARDC — The Enterprise vs. ARDC — The purpose. Had I been aware of that move at the time, I certainly would have scrutinized the governance process for ARDC and likely cried foul on that basis. That’s where I believe ARIN erred most grievously in this process and that’s where I believe these resources were hijacked to the detriment of the amateur radio community. I have no doubt that the board of ARDC (most of whom i consider friends) believed they were doing the right thing at each and every step. Unfortunately, they fell victim to an insidious form of scope creep and lost track of the fact that this allocation was for a purpose and not for an organization, no matter how well intentioned said organization may be. These addresses should be considered non-transferrable and the transfer should be reversed. Owen

On Jul 22, 2019, at 18:54 , John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 22 Jul 2019, at 9:05 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:

...

... The only thing I dispute here is that I’m pretty sure that the principals of ARDC did request ARIN to make ARDC the controlling organization of the resource. The question here is whether or not it was appropriate or correct for ARIN to do so.

IMHO, it was not. IMHO, ARIN should have recognized that this particular block was issued for a purpose and not to an organization or individual.

Owen -

All IP address blocks were issued for some purpose, and this includes quite a variety of early networks that were issued for various research purposes. There are also blocks that were issued (or made available via community process) for special purposes; as noted, you can find that registry here - https://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-ipv4-special-registry/iana-ipv4-specia...

All address blocks were issued for some purpose, but most were issued TO individuals or organizations FOR that purpose. In the case of 44.0.0.0/8, it was arguably issued TO the purpose as well as FOR the purpose and the “Reference” contact was just the person currently serving as POC for the address space, not an “owner” of the registration record.

...

That contacts were volunteers from the community that agreed to take on a task. Even if the block ended up contactless, it should not have been open to claim and certainly not to 8.3 or 8.4 partial transfer to another organization away from that purpose.

Unfortunately, the incremental way in which this was done probably rendered ARIN staff into a situation similar to the proverbial (and apocryphal) frog in a pot of water.

Not at all.

Oh? Do tell…

...

At each step, it probably seemed on the edge, but still appropriate. This was, of course exacerbated by the fact that the community didn’t really notice anything amiss until this last step, because the individuals in question were, by and large, trusted members of the community that appeared to be continuing to act in the community’s interest.

Actually, the change in 2011 to ARDC was perfectly appropriate then, and would be approved if received today –

No doubt…

AMPRnet was assigned for Amateur Packet Radio Experimentation (a /8 research assignment) with Hank Magnuski (or his designated successor) to determine how that was to be accomplished. It is presently registered to ARDC, a public benefit not-for-profit whose purposes are “to support, promote, and enhance digital communication and broader communication science and technology, to promote Amateur Radio, scientific research, experimentation, education, development, open access, and innovation in information and communication technology”, and this change was made by a designated successor (Brian Kantor.)

I’m aware.

You might not like ARDC’s administration due to their apparent lack of engagement with the community, but it remains quite clear that any of the contacts in the lineage of the block could have requested the same update. The change was compliant with the purpose of original issuance, and has been allowed for other projects/activities which similarly formalized their structure over time.

I admit there’s a valid case for this particular change. This particular change is the cold water stage of the above analogy.

...

Honestly, I doubt most of the community was aware of (I certainly wasn’t) the incorporation of ARDC and the subsequent transfer of control of 44.0.0.0/8 to ARDC — The Enterprise vs. ARDC — The purpose. Had I been aware of that move at the time, I certainly would have scrutinized the governance process for ARDC and likely cried foul on that basis. That’s where I believe ARIN erred most grievously in this process and that’s where I believe these resources were hijacked to the detriment of the amateur radio community.

The resources were registered to a not-for-profit entity of similar purpose per the direction of the authorized contact. In addition to the current contact, the organization’s board also contains those who were the authorized contact for the number block in the past and have contributed heavily to the amateur radio community. If the same request to update the registration were to arrive today, it would be approved, as to do otherwise would require that ARIN unilaterally impose policy constraints on an address block that are neither documented nor are the output of any community process for the definition of a special assignment at the IETF.

As for whether the recent transfer of a /10 portion was “to the detriment of the amateur radio community”, that is likely a topic that the amateur radio community should discuss with ARDC, and (as noted earlier) may not be particularly relevant to this mailing list or its subscribers.

There seem to be a good many participants besides just myself who consider it relevant. Owen

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 7:32 AM Naslund, Steve <SNaslund@medline.com> wrote:

In defense of John and ARIN, if you did not recognize that ARDC represented an authority for this resource, who would be?

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is THE organization which represents Hams in regulatory matters in the U.S. and is well known to Hams worldwide. You don't have to look very far. Just ask any ham. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin bill@herrin.us https://bill.herrin.us/

If they choose to they could have (in the ARIN region) signed a LRSA, but that's even been removed, in favor of the now much more watered down RSA.

I believe ARCD would have been required to sign an LRSA (if they had not previously) in order to transfer the block to Amazon. Also, a question for perhaps John here. Organization: Amazon Technologies Inc. (AT-88-Z)

https://www.arin.net/about/corporate/agreements/rsa_faq/#legacy-resource-hol... How do I know if my legacy number resources are already covered under an

LRSA or not?

Typically, any legacy number resources that are covered under an LRSA will

be associated with an Organization ID ending in a “-Z”. If you have any questions regarding your legacy resources, please contact ARIN’s Registration Services Department. You may contact the Registration Services Help Desk at +1.703.227.0660 or by submitting an Ask ARIN <https://account.arin.net/public/communication/message/beginQuestion.xhtml> ticket via your ARIN Online account.

Unless there was a clerical error somewhere, is this telling us that 44.192.0.0/10 remains classified as a legacy resource? I didn't think that was possible given that Amazon was not the original assignee. On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 11:19 AM Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 10:58 AM Matt Harris <matt@netfire.net> wrote:

...

Hence it's no longer "legacy" space that isn't covered by an RIR RSA but is instead now covered by an ARIN RSA.

'RIR RSA" is not a thing. Legacy blocks are basically drifting in the winds... there's no requirement on the holders to do anything really.. If they choose to they could have (in the ARIN region) signed a LRSA, but that's even been removed, in favor of the now much more watered down RSA.

Understood on specifics. But can you comment on the general ARIN policy on the topic? My understanding was that once a legacy resource was transferred , it was permanently removed as a legacy resource. On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 11:42 AM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 19 Jul 2019, at 11:33 AM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:

If they choose to they could have (in the ARIN region) signed a LRSA,

...

but that's even been removed, in favor of the now much more watered down RSA.

I believe ARCD would have been required to sign an LRSA (if they had not previously) in order to transfer the block to Amazon.

Also, a question for perhaps John here.

Organization: Amazon Technologies Inc. (AT-88-Z)

...

https://www.arin.net/about/corporate/agreements/rsa_faq/#legacy-resource-hol...

How do I know if my legacy number resources are already covered under an

...

LRSA or not?

Typically, any legacy number resources that are covered under an LRSA will

...

be associated with an Organization ID ending in a “-Z”. If you have any questions regarding your legacy resources, please contact ARIN’s Registration Services Department. You may contact the Registration Services Help Desk at +1.703.227.0660 or by submitting an Ask ARIN <https://account.arin.net/public/communication/message/beginQuestion.xhtml> ticket via your ARIN Online account.

Unless there was a clerical error somewhere, is this telling us that 44.192.0.0/10 remains classified as a legacy resource? I didn't think that was possible given that Amazon was not the original assignee.

Tom -

ARIN doesn’t discuss details of specific registrations publicly; you need to refer any such questions to the registrant.

/John

John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers

Good deal. Thanks John, have a great weekend! On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 11:52 AM John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:

On 19 Jul 2019, at 11:46 AM, Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:

Understood on specifics. But can you comment on the general ARIN policy on the topic? My understanding was that once a legacy resource was transferred , it was permanently removed as a legacy resource.

As noted earlier, general ARIN policy is as follows -

*Those who received IPv4 address blocks by InterNIC (or its predecessors) prior to the inception of ARIN on 22 December 1997 are legacy resource holders, and continue to receive those same registry services for those blocks (Whois, reverse DNS, ability to update) without any need for an agreement with ARIN. This has been provided without any fee to the original registrants (or their legal successors) as recognition of their contributions to the early Internet.*

*Some legacy resource holders opt to sign a “legacy registration services agreement” by which ARIN provides specific and well-defined legal rights to the registrant – this is the same RSA as other ARIN customers, but ARIN caps the total annual maintenance fees that are incurred by legacy resource holders. An RSA is also required to receive services that the community has funded the developed since ARIN’s inception, such as resource certification services. *

Thanks! /John

John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers

On 07/18, Christopher Morrow wrote:

My guess is that arin needed more than just: "can control routing for a few bits of time". I don't really know, but I hope they had more requirements than that :)

It certainly doesn't look like it... My understanding is that 44/8 was, very much like different pieces of the radio spectrum, collective common property of amateur radio operators. That an organisation was needed to operate a registry because of the nature of IP address allocation does not amount to ownership or the right to sell anything. This is exactly analogous to the fact that the ARRL (or RAC, or RSGB etc) does not own and cannot sell radio spectrum allocated for amateur use. This is not a legitimate sale. ARIN should reverse the changes in its record, and the ARDC should give the "several million dollars" back to Amazon. Then we can decide, openly and transparently, if, for example, some piece of 44/8 should be returned to IANA for allocation to the RIRs. Greetings, William Waites VE3HW

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 10:45 PM William Waites <ww@styx.org> wrote:

Then we can decide, openly and transparently, if, for example, some piece of 44/8 should be returned to IANA for allocation to the RIRs.

This sounds like the more correct answer with regard to what should be done with space that isn't and is probably never going to be used that is allocated to a community organization. After reading the analogy above regarding spectrum space, I shudder to think what the community response would be if the FCC were to tacitly allow the ARRL to receive several million (or billion in this case) dollars from, say, Verizon in exchange for some part of our exclusive amateur bands. Indeed the ARRL has a fund (the "Spectrum Defense Fund") with the purpose of employing lawyers and public policy folks to help prevent our community resources from shrinking out from under us. 73's - K1RIN

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 11:13:24PM -0400, Majdi S. Abbas <msa@latt.net> wrote a message of 26 lines which said:

Amusingly, they still seem to be advertising the covering aggregate,

Are you sure? RIPE stat shows it stopped one month ago <https://stat.ripe.net/44.0.0.0%2F8#tabId=routing&routing_routing-status.resource=44.0.0.0/8&routing_routing-status.data_overload_limit=ignore> Same thing on other looking glasses.

On Jul 26, 2019, at 21:59 , Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us> wrote:

Responding to no one in particular, and not representing views of any current or former employer ...

I find all of this hullabaloo to be ... fascinating. A little background to frame my comments below. I was GM of the IANA in the early 2000's, I held a tech license from 1994 through 2004 (I gave it up because life changed, and I no longer had time; but I still have all my toys, err, I mean, gear); and I have known two of the ARDC board members and one of the advisors listed at https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/ <https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/> for over fifteen years. I consider them all friends, and trust their judgement explicitly. One of them I've known for over 20 years, and consider a close and very dear friend.

There have been a number of points over the past 30 years where anyone who genuinely cared about this space could have used any number of mechanisms to raise concerns over how it's been managed, and by whom. I cannot help but think that some of this current sound and fury is an excuse to express righteous indignation for its own sake. The folks involved with ARDC have been caring for the space for a long time. From my perspective, seeing the writing on the wall regarding the upcoming friction around IPv4 space as an asset with monetary value increasing exponentially, they took quite reasonable steps to create a legal framework to ensure that their ability to continue managing the space would be protected. Some of you may remember that other groups, like the IETF, were taking similar steps before during and after that same time frame. Sure, you can complain about what was done, how it was done, etc.; but where were you then? Are you sure that at least part of your anger isn't due to the fact that all of these things have happened over the last 20 years, and you had no idea they were happening?

Certainly part of my anger is that I did not know some of them were happening. However, most of my anger is around the fact that: 1. It never in a million years would have occurred to me that these people who I also consider friends and also trust explicitly would take this particular action without significant prior (and much wider) consultation with the amateur radio community. 2. I believe this was done quietly and carefully orchestrated specifically to avoid any risk of successful backlash by the time the community became aware of this particular intended action. If you want to say shame on us for trusting these people and not noticing the severe corporate governance problems with ARDC until they took this particular action, then I suppose that’s a fair comment.

So let's talk a little about what "stewardship" means. Many folks have complained about how ARDC has not done a good job of $X function that stewards of the space should perform. Do you think having some money in the bank will help contribute to their ability to do that? Has anyone looked at how much of the space is actually being used now, and what percentage reduction in available space carving out a /10 actually represents? And nowadays when IPv6 is readily available essentially "for free," how much is the amateur community actually being affected by this?

All of those are good questions. I don’t have data to answer any of them other than that removing a /10 from a /8 is obviously a 25% reduction in the total space, so clearly a somewhat larger (though I don’t know by how much) reduction in available space since available space is some fraction of the remaining 1.5 /9s.

And with all due respect to Jon (and I mean that sincerely), what did it/does it really mean that "Jon gave $PERSON the space for $REASON" 30 years later? Jon was a brilliant guy, but from what I've been told would also be one of the first to admit when he made a mistake. One of which, and one that he actively campaigned to fix, was the idea of classful address space to start with, and particularly the idea that it was OK to hand out massive chunks of it to anyone who asked. As a former ham I definitely appreciate the concept of them having space to play ... errr, experiment with. But did they ever, really, need a /8? Historically, what percentage of that space has ever actually been used? And as Dave Conrad pointed out, given all of the "historical" allocations that have been revisited and/or repurposed already, is taking another look at 44/8 really that far out of line?

Taking another look is not at all out of line. Discarding 25% of it before letting the community in question on a broader scale take a look is absolutely very far out of line IMHO.

Now all that said, if any of my friends had asked me how I thought news of this sale should have been handled, I would have told them that this reaction that we're seeing now is 100% predictable, and while it could never be eliminated entirely it could be limited in scope and ferocity by getting ahead of the message. At minimum when the transfer occurred. But that doesn't change anything about my opinion that the sale itself was totally reasonable, done by reasonable people, and in keeping with the concept of being good stewards of the space.

In actual fact, had the ARDC board approached the broader amateur radio community with a plan to sell the space, it’s entirely likely that I would have lent my support to the plan. That does not change the fact that I feel it was beyond their mandate and out of line for them to take the action first and neither consult the community before nor after. Owen

On Aug 27, 2019, at 23:50 , Bryan Fields <Bryan@bryanfields.net> wrote:

On 8/27/19 11:52 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

...

...

On Jul 26, 2019, at 21:59 , Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us> wrote:

<snip>

...

...

and I have known two of the ARDC board members and one of the advisors listed at https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/ <https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/> for over fifteen years. I consider them all friends, and trust their judgement explicitly. One of them I've known for over 20 years, and consider a close and very dear friend.

There have been a number of points over the past 30 years where anyone who genuinely cared about this space could have used any number of mechanisms to raise concerns over how it's been managed, and by whom.

<snip>

I will say most people ignored them, as TBQH, nothing changes in amateur radio until people die. ARDC finally allocated space, got reverse DNS working, and basically did nothing else. It was a technical org doing nothing of any real value.

I had brought up the issues of governance numerous times, and said it didn't look right to have people on the board with conflicts, or even licensed amateurs.

I confess I never saw any of the questions about governance prior to the announcement of the sale. If I had, I might have been spurred to look closer at least.

There were other personnel issues brought up as well and no action was taken. If was an org doing the bare minimums and we got what we needed from it, so why rock the boat?

Well, there’s also the fact that the people involved in the org that I was aware of were people that I trusted and would not have expected to take radical action absent some outreach and consent of the community.

...

However, most of my anger is around the fact that: 1. It never in a million years would have occurred to me that these people who I also consider friends and also trust explicitly would take this particular action without significant prior (and much wider) consultation with the amateur radio community.

2. I believe this was done quietly and carefully orchestrated specifically to avoid any risk of successful backlash by the time the community became aware of this particular intended action.

Bingo.

...

If you want to say shame on us for trusting these people and not noticing the severe corporate governance problems with ARDC until they took this particular action, then I suppose that’s a fair comment.

Many know these people, and you cannot let that acquaintance cloud your judgment here. If these were people you did not know and they did this, you'd call it what it is. If an acquaintance does the same action, is it not the same?

An acquaintance is different from a trusted colleague and friend. While I don’t have particularly close relationships with the parties involved, I did consider them trusted colleagues and friends. This doesn’t cloud my judgment about calling this action what it was, but it did cloud my judgment in terms of anticipating this action. When we trust people, we don’t expect them to act outside of certain bounds, as I did not expect that these particular people would act in this particular manner. It is a denial of human nature to claim that we can not allow our trust to cloud our judgment when it comes to expectations of how people will act.

Does it pass the smell test that 44/8 was used, with no benefit to ARDC by CAIDA? This use held back deployment of 44/8 for years by the amateur users. Does it smell funny that the majority of the board members of ARDC were CAIDA board members?

It does pass the smell test, actually, when I understand the manner in which it was “used”. CAIDA is not some evil spammer researching ways to infiltrate more networks or hide more snowshoeing. They are a public benefit research organization that has provided a lot of valuable information to the internet over the years. Their “use” of 44/8 was limited to a passive feed of otherwise unroutable packets destined for unregistered addresses within 44/8. Since they were adjacent to the router where this was occurring. I’m not sure how or why you claim that this held back deployment for years. You’ll need to provide more information and/or evidence to support that claim. At the moment, as I understand things, that claim doesn’t pass the smell test.

...

...

So let's talk a little about what "stewardship" means. Many folks have complained about how ARDC has not done a good job of $X function that stewards of the space should perform. Do you think having some money in the bank will help contribute to their ability to do that? Has anyone looked at how much of the space is actually being used now, and what percentage reduction in available space carving out a /10 actually represents? And nowadays when IPv6 is readily available essentially "for free," how much is the amateur community actually being affected by this?

All of those are good questions. I don’t have data to answer any of them other than that removing a /10 from a /8 is obviously a 25% reduction in the total space, so clearly a somewhat larger (though I don’t know by how much) reduction in available space since available space is some fraction of the remaining 1.5 /9s.

Based on the way this was handled we suspect it was part of an unsolicited offer by the buyer.

I have no doubt that Amazon (and likely a broker acting on behalf of Amazon) probably approached the ARDC board to initiate the sale, but it’s pretty clear that ARDC took multiple deliberate steps over years that I suspect preceded any such approach that were clearly aimed at making this possible.

If an organization decided to sell off 1/4 of it's assets and start a charitable giving process, the first thing done would be define the charitable giving areas and process. Get your house in order, build up a board full of talented people aligned with this new mission, and then effect the sale, no?

Considering ARDC is only giving to IRS approved 501c3 organizations, the sale of the part of the space dedicated to non-US use (44.128.0.0/9) doesn't seem right. Seems like if you're going to sell space not for use in the US, you should have a plan to benefit those who it was taken from, no?

The first inkling of any of this was reverse DNS for 44/8 users was broken. Mail was rejected, and people started to ask questions. There was no consultation of anyone with technical clue on this. Had there been, we could have prevented a 5+ day outage.

I think we all get that '44.in-addr.arpa. NS $SERVERS' would need to move to the next byte boundary in configuration. Sure, it's 192 new records that need to be made at ARIN, and even if they can't script it, it's an hour or two of typing in the ARIN portal.

I would have expected at least one ARDC board member in particular to have significantly more DNS clue than the average DNS administrator.

Based on the absolute secrecy this was done with and the lack of process or thinking that went into it, I have to think it was an unsolicited bid, and likely negotiated by ARDC personal lacking real-world business savvy.

That would not surprise me.

...

...

And with all due respect to Jon (and I mean that sincerely), what did it/does it really mean that "Jon gave $PERSON the space for $REASON" 30 years later? Jon was a brilliant guy, but from what I've been told would also be one of the first to admit when he made a mistake. One of which, and one that he actively campaigned to fix, was the idea of classful address space to start with, and particularly the idea that it was OK to hand out massive chunks of it to anyone who asked. As a former ham I definitely appreciate the concept of them having space to play ... errr, experiment with. But did they ever, really, need a /8? Historically, what percentage of that space has ever actually been used? And as Dave Conrad pointed out, given all of the "historical" allocations that have been revisited and/or repurposed already, is taking another look at 44/8 really that far out of line?

Taking another look is not at all out of line. Discarding 25% of it before letting the community in question on a broader scale take a look is absolutely very far out of line IMHO.

While I never knew Jon personally, I can't think he would have expected the value of IPv4 space either. I can only think his allocation policies would have been much more different.

I never actually met Jon personally. However, what I know from other people’s accounts and from reading various documents written by him in the early days of the internet, I think that anyone approaching him with the idea of IPv4 addresses having monetary value would have been viewed as a strange attempt at dark humor.

<snip>

...

In actual fact, had the ARDC board approached the broader amateur radio community with a plan to sell the space, it’s entirely likely that I would have lent my support to the plan. That does not change the fact that I feel it was beyond their mandate and out of line for them to take the action first and neither consult the community before nor after.

This has been my position all along. A discussion should have been had. There was no pressing reason it had to be done right now.

Other than the buyer’s fear that they might not get everything they wanted. Likely this resulted in the buyer insisting on secrecy and applying pressure to close the transaction before any risk of publicity.

Based on my personal discussion with Brian Kantor in 2014, he was 100% against selling, or even leasing it as he stated ARDC merely was the custodian of the space for amateur use. I can't think what changed, other than his employment situation.

"They drove a dump-truck full of money up to my house, I'm not made of stone!" -- Herschel Krustofsky

Sounds about right. Unfortunately, I don’t think the amateur radio community is strong enough to put meaningful pressure on Amazon. I’m not 100% sure I wouldn’t have supported the action in a community consultation, either. I resent that this was done without consultation, I definitely would have insisted on better governance structure for ARDC prior to approving such consultation. At this point, I think we have lost. I think the best we can do is try to adapt the governance structure of ARDC to empower the Amateur Radio community and ensure that there isn’t a repeat of this. Owen

On Aug 31, 2019, at 09:23 , Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us> wrote:

On 8/27/19 8:52 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

...

...

On Jul 26, 2019, at 21:59 , Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us <mailto:dougb@dougbarton.us>> wrote:

Responding to no one in particular, and not representing views of any current or former employer ...

I find all of this hullabaloo to be ... fascinating. A little background to frame my comments below. I was GM of the IANA in the early 2000's, I held a tech license from 1994 through 2004 (I gave it up because life changed, and I no longer had time; but I still have all my toys, err, I mean, gear); and I have known two of the ARDC board members and one of the advisors listed at https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/ for over fifteen years. I consider them all friends, and trust their judgement explicitly. One of them I've known for over 20 years, and consider a close and very dear friend.

There have been a number of points over the past 30 years where anyone who genuinely cared about this space could have used any number of mechanisms to raise concerns over how it's been managed, and by whom. I cannot help but think that some of this current sound and fury is an excuse to express righteous indignation for its own sake. The folks involved with ARDC have been caring for the space for a long time. From my perspective, seeing the writing on the wall regarding the upcoming friction around IPv4 space as an asset with monetary value increasing exponentially, they took quite reasonable steps to create a legal framework to ensure that their ability to continue managing the space would be protected. Some of you may remember that other groups, like the IETF, were taking similar steps before during and after that same time frame. Sure, you can complain about what was done, how it was done, etc.; but where were you then? Are you sure that at least part of your anger isn't due to the fact that all of these things have happened over the last 20 years, and you had no idea they were happening?

Certainly part of my anger is that I did not know some of them were happening.

Fair enough.

...

However, most of my anger is around the fact that: 1.It never in a million years would have occurred to me that these people who I also consider friends and also trust explicitly would take this particular action without significant prior (and much wider) consultation with the amateur radio community. 2.I believe this was done quietly and carefully orchestrated specifically to avoid any risk of successful backlash by the time the community became aware of this particular intended action.

I have actually been in this exact same position, of knowing that a thing is the right thing to do, but also knowing that doing it would create a poop-storm. I don't know if your analysis is right or not, but if I had been in their shoes I probably would have done the same thing.

Well, I suppose that’s a matter of perspective and personal conviction. For me, It’s hard to defend a belief that an action is correct if I’m afraid that the community I’m a steward for will offer up significant opposition to the point that I want to take the action in secret behind the back of the community. I’m not intending any insult, or judgment on your value system, but from my perspective, avoiding the community discussion of a plan and acting on it behind their backs is an act of cowardice, not an act of conviction.

...

If you want to say shame on us for trusting these people and not noticing the severe corporate governance problems with ARDC until they took this particular action, then I suppose that’s a fair comment.

No, I am not attempting to shame anyone (although I admit my message was a bit testy). My point is simply that all of this after-the-fact griping, in the absence of any proven harm, is probably not as much about the thing as it is about self-culpability in what lead up to the thing. But as humans it's hard to direct that anger towards ourselves, so it gets directed outwardly. So, no shame, as it's a very human reaction. But a little more self-awareness would not be out of place.

There is proven harm. There were active users of the address space sold that were (at the very least) forced to renumber.

...

...

So let's talk a little about what "stewardship" means. Many folks have complained about how ARDC has not done a good job of $X function that stewards of the space should perform. Do you think having some money in the bank will help contribute to their ability to do that? Has anyone looked at how much of the space is actually being used now, and what percentage reduction in available space carving out a /10 actually represents? And nowadays when IPv6 is readily available essentially "for free," how much is the amateur community actually being affected by this?

All of those are good questions. I don’t have data to answer any of them

So shouldn't actually looking at the space to determine if any real harm was done be the next step?

There were definitely allocations/assignments in the space sold. I think that the next step should be finding a way to alter the ARDC governance and board to ensure that such an action is not possible in the future without significant community review prior to the action being taken. ARDC must be reorganized to empower the Amateur Community. Owen