Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP

Jeremy Kister writes "According to a post on the North American Network Operators Group mailing-list, The State of New Jersey has issued a temporary restraining order, allowing a former customer of Net Access Corporation (NAC) to take non-portable IP Address space (issued from ARIN), away from NAC." The post argues: "This is a matter is of great importance to the entire Internet community. This type of precedent is very dangerous. If this ruling is upheld it has the potential to disrupt routing throughout the Internet, and change practices of business for any Internet Service Provider."

It just goes to show you...

[Anita Coney]

Judges are ignorant.

they should get a clue

[CBravo]

This is like taking your home address with you, when you move.

"But I want to live on 115 Baker Street". How can a judge get that dumb.

Ouch... Keep your IP?

[stratjakt]

Unlike the whole "keep your cell-phone number" jiberjoo, this is unneeded and will do nothing but break the internet, will it not?

Isn't the whole DNS system set up to avoid the need to keep your numeric address? I mean, it's irrelevant if it only takes 5 minutes for my new IP to propogate.

Oh well, I hope this breaks the internet. I'm sick of the internet.

It's possible to do...

[mratitude]

... but you don't want to pay for it. Take my word for it.

Re:they should get a clue

[mrwonton]

Exactly. Its not like changing addresses is impossible. With home addresses, you have mail forwarding, and with IP addresses, you have DNS.

Re:they should get a clue

[crow]

Or even more like taking your zip code with you when you move.

Technology Savvy Judges Needed...

[B4RSK]

This really shows the need for more technology savvy judges.

I imagine the thought process was something like: "Hey, if we can have cell number portability, why can't we have IP address portability? Same thing, right?"

DNS Solves This

[digitalvengeance]

This will surely be compared to WLNP, but its different in one key way. The internet has a built in system that alleviates the need for IP Portability, that system is called DNS. Regardless of how many times you change IPs, your domain name can remain constant.

Lets pray the courts don't start setting technical policy more than they already are. How long before I have to enter my MAC address at every console just to make sure any random ARP packets intended for a machine I was just at still get to me here?

Josh

ugh

[dark404]

Matters relating to the internet should be outside the jurisdiction of such judges. The internet isn't a local thing, it crosses national borders. Allowing any non-global entity to pass judgement on a portion of the internet is one step towards fragmentation.

And talk about turn the DNS system into a tangled weave of crap. This type of thing will completely nullify the idea of ip-address ranges.

Not like phone numbers

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

To be honest, I was half-way afraid the Slashdot crowd would hail this ruling as a strike for the "little guy", but of course most of us are at least a little more technically savvy than the average judge... I think that it is probable (and clearly this is the case with the Judge) that most people think of IP addresses like phone numbers, which of course is not the case.

This is what DNS is for

[antarctican]

How stupid can these courts get? Why on earth would someone need to take their IPs with them? If they've configured things such that they're dependent on a certain IP, they obviously have very incompetent system s staff.

This is what DNS is for, so you can plunk any IP in and have it resolve properly.

Re:What benifit to the person that brought the sui

[defile]

Some idiot probably hired a bunch of idiots to migrate their web site to a new provider, they probably fucked DNS to hell, the idiot probably demanded that the ISP just allow them to take the IP address and be done with it. In the meantime, the idiot went out of business because his site was down, and the ISP that said "you're crazy we can't do any of this!!" gets blamed.

How can a state court enforce something like this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the ISP is in another state they would be attempting to regulate interstate commerce, and even within their own state they are not the governing body assigning IP addresses.

It would be like the state government voiding FCC rules and telling a radio station they could keep their "WKRP" station title even if the federal government was doing the licensing.

Big whoop?

[ChimpyMonkey]

There is no mention of the size of the customers IP range. For all we know it could be a /16, which while in itself would be strange (non portable /16, unheard of), it wouldn't be a techinical problem. Anything down to about a /23 wouldn't be a major issue. 55% of routes in the globabl BGP table are /24s, an extra /23 would barely register. If its a /24 or less, then the judge needs to be hit with a clue stick. Whatever happens, its going to change the definition of "public share resource" forever. Honestly, the someone needs to explain to the judge that IP space is not owned, it is (for lack of a better word) leased to the user. I'm getting off my high horse now before....

Re:OK.

[stratjakt]

It's still ridiculous that the judge doesn't have enough brains to toss the case right out. The numeric address space belongs to NAC, a domain name (if registered) belongs to the plaintiff.

Like another poster said, this is like wanting to keep your street address and zip code when you move across country. Imagine how well the mail system would work when my address is "129 main st, smalltown PA 21132" and I live in an igloo in Alaska.

Obviously he doesn't know how TCP/IP works, how the IP address space is organized, or what DNS is (your DNS domain name is your "address", not your dotted-quad IP).

It's dangerous having these jokers ruling on cases like this. Small-time judges like this one tend to have a god-complex, and just love the chance to legislate from the bench.

The upside is, if he pulls it off, it'll give the RIAA a hell of a time trying to subpoena ISPs for information based on IP. They'd have no way to know who owns which address.

Can the law gurus clarify?

[wwest4]

> if this ruling stands and a new precedent is set, any customer of any
> carrier would be allowed to take their IP space with them when they leave
> just because it is not convenient for them to renumber.

Umm... isn't this alarmist? If this were established as a precedent (which it's not) it is a state court ruling... aren't state courts reluctant to accept other states' courts rulings as precedent?

So what?

[Tenebrious1]

Ok, he takes a block of IP addresses, and connects to his new ISP. Surprise, nothing works!He calls the ISP and they laugh. He sues, and a different judge rules he can't force the new ISP to use his old IP addresses.

So a block of IP addresses is gone permanently from the internet. Well, at least until overturned on appeal. At the moment, it's not much different from companies sitting on large blocks of addresses and refusing to give them up.

Re:Ineresting...

[marnargulus]

This is only akin to telephone number portability if people needed to know what port to switch to at the company. You know like in the old days where they had actual plugs that they moved? DNS is the phone number, and it already is portable. That is the whole idea behind dynamic. Moving an IP is like keeping the port the phone company switches you to. It really is useless to anyone except the phone company or ISP in this case.

Re:OK.

[gowen]

Obviously he doesn't know how TCP/IP works, how the IP address space is organized, or what DNS is (your DNS domain name is your "address", not your dotted-quad

Right. So, rather sensibly, they've imposed the status quo as a temporary measure, and the judge will use that time to find out the background to the case, and will undoubtedly receive amicus briefs informing them. Then, suitably informed, they'll (s)he'll make the decision.

Theres no reason that a judge should be expected to understand DNS and the Internet routing, any more than you should understand property conveyance law.

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like the offtopic modder still had a point left for you... ;)

Average people

[tod_miller]

If average people cannot vote and decide about nuclear power, however uneducated they may be, who should decide?

If the average person has the power to vote for a leader, and that leader has the power to implement nuclear power, then there isn't much difference in putting anything to the vote.

The reality is, we have to respect everyones opinions for what they are, no matter how irrelevant they may be.

I agree with you though about the judge, in terms of law, this is about right and wrong, and in terms of is someone entitled to keep an IP address, isn't it simply a case that it never belonged to his ISP in the first place? only through licensing?

I thought ICANN had the final word?

Seems strange to me!

It's temporary. Relax.

[Minwee]

As long a the plaintif coughs up the dough for additional routers to handle this idiocy, that's fine.

The sad thing is that they already _had_ their own IP space assigned to them, but (according to NAC, at least) were too lazy to migrate to it.

Why bother doing all that hard technical work when you can call your lawyers and force someone else to do it for you? All the cool kids are doing it.

Re:they should get a clue

[gr8_phk]

" This is like taking your home address with you, when you move."

No, it's like taking your cell-phone number with you when you change carriers.

I've often said they should switch to IPV6 and everyone should get a BLOCK of static IP addresses based on geographic location. The problem is the ISPs want to own your IP address and they use the shortage in IPV4 to retain control.

Re:It just goes to show you...

[Politburo]

No, judges are not simply ignorant because they haven't been studying computers and using the internet for the past 10 years. Judges must work within the boundaries of the law, and in many cases, the law is not equipped to deal with modern circumstances such as IP addresses. I didn't get a chance to look into the details of this yet, but neither did the judge. That's why he issued a temporary restraining order, and not a permanent decision.

Re:OK.

[introverted]

It's temporary, to make sure neither party suffers to greatly until the Actual Judgement gets made.

Granted, it's not permanent, but here's judge's order, from the article: "NAC shall permit CUSTOMER to continue utilization through any carrier or carriers of CUSTOMER's choice of any IP addresses that were utilized by, through or on behalf of CUSTOMER under the April 2003 Agreement....

So NAC is required to allow this, regardless of how much grief it causes.

Sounds to me like someone took the concept of phone number portability and tried to apply it to another problem domain.

Re:OK.

[farzadb82]

The upside is, if he pulls it off, it'll give the RIAA a hell of a time trying to subpoena ISPs for information based on IP. They'd have no way to know who owns which address

Actually not true since your IP will now be "static" and can be almost guaranteed to point to you. If anything this will make the RIAA's life easier since they will only need to do a name lookup against the DNS (or whatever protocol gets created to manage this) to find out who owns the IP.

Re:they should get a clue

[MindStalker]

Yes, but that was an FCC decision, a regulation per say. This is a court decision. If the FCC suddenly said one day ok, people have to be able to take their IPs with them. ISPs would be pissed, but they'd probably all move to IP6 where its much more possible. So that could be a good thing. But this is regulation through courts, not very good as it really hasn't been publically debated and considered.

Phone number portability

[smarttowers]

Phone numbers are only portable to geographic areas if you move to another state you can't change to another provider and take your number with you. Obviously the people involved in the portability of phone numbers realized that area codes would be destroyed if they allowed transfer of the number anywhere. It seems like taking your IP with you would also be limited by the fact that IP's aren't portable by design and to move IP's would damage the integrity of the internet. I am not a lawyer but it seems the best way for the provider to fight this would be address the issue of IP addresses not being portable in design and would require restructuring the entire internet.

Re:IP and phone numbers

[pe1rxq]

Its a little bit like phone numbers which are indeec portable, but only within a network.
(Try taking your phone number accross a country boundary for instance).

Jeroen

Re:IP and phone numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. DNS names like Slashdot.org are like Phone numbers. You can redirect where they point to. IP's are like your house address. Try getting the post office to deliver to 1600 Pensylvania Ave, Washington DC, USA with the house in somewhere in Europe. Moving the IP's takes a change in the configuration of the internet routers.

Re:they should get a clue

[Old Uncle Bill]

And why on earth does someone need to take their IPs with them? Crap, re-IP your stuff, change your dns and be done with it. Only thing I can think of is bad/lazy admins. I have had to do this on internet sites that make > $1 billion a year with no disruption. Set your DNS TTL low and make the switch. Within 15 minutes all traffic should go to the new IPs. It's not like someone you knew ten years ago is going to try to contact you on that IP...

Re:No different then cell phone number portability

[defile]

Much different from cell phone number portability. When you want to call mom you key in a 7-10 digit address to ring mom's phone. Most users won't key in "mom". If mom changes her phone number she has to tell everyone her new number, so even if you set up a voice dialing entry, you're not isolated from having to know her number at least once so you can update your phone book entry.

However, when you want to do a keyword search do you type in 216.239.57.99 or do you type in google.com?

When you check your email do you type in 64.4.32.7 or do you type in hotmail.com?

When you want to look at porn do you type in 64.71.165.211 or do you type in thehun.com?

Have you *ever* seen those IP addresses before today? Probably not. You don't need to know them to reach them.

Do you have any idea that when you type in thehun.com, sometimes you see 216.218.206.40 and sometimes you see 64.71.165.211 and sometimes it's 216.218.255.232? Would you know if they changed? Would you know if there were a hundred of them? This stuff is kept hidden from you by DNS for a reason.

If a user ever needs to see an IP address, someone has done something wrong. The purpose of DNS is to make physical IP address assignments irrelevant.

And not only is it dumb, but it's extremely hard to do. IP address networks are segmented, and routers need to be able to rely on cases where it can say "Well, I don't know what's on the other end of this network, BUT I DO KNOW FOR A FACT THAT *THIS* END *ALWAYS* HAS ADDRESSES IN THE 216.139.128.x RANGE!"

It's not like cell phone numbers at all.

[SwansonMarpalum]

This shows a profound ignorance on the part of the court and the part of the former customer of NAC. While IP addresses can be portable, they are not under any circumstances like telephone numbers, land line or cell. There is functional routing information embedded in every single IP address, which is part of why the internet works in the first place.

Doing this will cause routing tables to grow exponentially if it continues unchecked, as it greatly reduces the hierarchical, logical nature of IP addresses and how they correspond to geographic providers of bandwidth.

This is bad, this is VERY BAD for the internet. I appreciate the person's concerns, but there is already a solution out there for portable addressing. It is known as DNS. They need to update their DNS records to point to new IPs from their new ISP, not strong arm their old ISP through the legal system into breaking the internet.

This is a failure of the legal system which will cause lasting damage to the internet, in my humble opinion.

... meet my friend, Mr Null Route.

[MatrixXForm]

If this matter actually ends up in a permanent order requiring the IP space to be released, no prizes for guessing how long it will take for that block to be null routed by angry administrators everywhere.

Horrible!

[Egekrusher2K]

Call me flaimbait, I don't care. That judge is beyond ignorant. The fact that this case even made it to court is disheartening. As stated previously, this is akin to demanding to have the same street address that you had at your last residence. I really don't understand the reasoning behind this. I hope this dies a quick death.

Re:It just goes to show you...

[Politburo]

Research? How much research did you do on it? 2 seconds of reading comments on Slashdot? I know that's all I've done, and I'm willing to admit it, and give the judge the benefit of the doubt. S/He's issued a temporary restraining order in this case. Are you ignorant to the fact this means that the case is still open and under review? Would the judge not also be ignorant if he just threw the case out without looking at it closely enough? Generally, a restraining order prevents any further damage from being committed while the case is under review. Yes, it may be true that the complainant has no legal argument, but in our legal system we give a benefit of the doubt to victims and complainants. The judge in this case took a quick look at the facts, thought the case had some merit, and decided to take a closer look at it.

Re:they should get a clue

[Andrewkov]

It's more like he wants to move to a different state but keep his area code and phone number.

Not an accurate metaphor

[ebcdic]

Until the early 1990s, anyone could get a block of IP addresses, and it was up to them how they got packets routed to them. This didn't scale well, and it's now virtually impossible. But that's just a result of technical decisions made over the last 10 or 15 years - and they could have been made differently - so there's no reason to expect a judge to be familiar with that. It's certainly
not as obvious or clear-cut as a physical address or even a post code.

Presumably as the case proceeds good technical arguments will be made and the temporary order lifted.

Re:IP and phone numbers

[miu]

IP addresses are like phone numbers

A dns entry is more like a telephone number and that is what should be used for portability. A phone switch can get a local routing number for any dialed number. There is not really any way for a router to do the same for individual addresses in a reasonably efficient way.

This is a temporary order by the judge and I'm sure once he has a chance to understand the technical and logistical issues the correct decision (non-portability of ipv4 addresses) will be made.

Lawyers should not do technical stuff.

[Theovon]

See, it makes sense to be able to take your cell phone number with you, because people actually use that number. But with internet addresses, it's usually by DNS entry, and your IP address can even be completely dynamic. Therefore, there's no reason to take your IP address with you, especially since it'll screw up internet routing.

Re:they should get a clue

[grimarr]

Here's the analogy that I came up with.

It's like the customer rented a few cars from Avis for a few months. Now, he's decided to rent his cars from Hartz, but he demanded that he be able to use the license numbers from the Avis cars on his Hertz cars, because he liked the numbers. The judge said that sounded OK to him, without asking the DMV what it thought about the matter, even though the DMV is the owner of the license numbers.

Do you think that's simple enough for a judge to understand? Or does it need to use Sesame Street characters somehow?

what's scary about IP allocation

[mabu]

What's really scary about IP allocation is how many individual corporations have so many IPs [whois.sc].

It might seem reasonable for IBM and Apple to have an entire Class A, but why do Ford, Eli Lily, Halliburton, Prudential, GE, and Merck have entire Class A IP blocks when they're not using a fraction of them??? The IP allocation list reads like a who's who of political favors.

Re:Technology Savvy Judges Needed...

[Politburo]

I imagine the thought process was something like: "Hey, if we can have cell number portability, why can't we have IP address portability? Same thing, right?"

Why does everyone keep saying this, and why does it keep getting modded up? I know it seems like this was the case, since everyone but us is stupid. However, the judge issued a temporary order. The thought process was probably more like "Hey, I have no idea what I'm dealing with here, so I'll make the parties abide by the previous agreement and do some work." If the final judgement comes back and says in there somewhere "If we can do it with cell phones, why not IPs," then maybe I'll agree with what you're saying. Until then, it's just silly elitism and downright wrong. We're talking about someone who has been through law school and is now a judge. Let's have a little more respect.

Re:It just goes to show you...

[tanguyr]

In some ways I'm not sure how this is different on the surface from cell phone number portability.

The big difference is that phone companies don't buy their phone numbers off the government, whereas ISPs do pay for their IP ranges. Ignoring the technical side of things (block routing), this would be equivalent to a customer switching his car rental from Hertz to Avis, but insisting that he be able to take the same physical car with the other "provider". Even worse, in fact, since the car in question is the property of the rental agency, which could make a deal to sell it to the competition, whereas an IP range is only leased by an ISP and can't be resold.

Re:they should get a clue

[Desert Raven]

You, obviously have no clue about network routing. It's a whole lot more than "some doing". Routing tables would explode by a factor of thousands, choking any of the current routers to a complete standstill.

And, even past that, the addresses were assigned to the ISP, and leased to the customer. This is the equivalent of you renting a car from Hertz for your business, then declaring it actually belongs to you.

Both the customer and the judge in this case are morons.

Re:they should get a clue

[donnyspi]

People can take their cell phone numbers with them so now they want to take everything with them.

What's the hubbub, bub?

[Piquan]

So what's the big deal? Sure, the customer in question has a severe case of recto-cranial inversion. But why is everybody saying that this TRO heralds the doom of the route tables?

The judge doesn't know the technical issues, so he's issued the TRO to keep things static until he can examine everything and issue a ruling.

Note that the judge isn't insisting that the customer be able to take his numbers, just that the ISP can't prevent it. In other words, they can't BGP-advertise those numbers, or sell them to another customer, etc. The judge is just asking (okay, ordering) the ISP to set those IPs aside for the time being. If the customer can find somebody who'll advertise 'em, then that's fine too.

In a little while, the judge will have studied the situation, and gotten amicus curiae briefs, and probably expert testimony, and will issue a fair ruling (which, I expect, will tell the customer to go away and quit whining about his IPs). But for him to be fair in his ruling, he has to make sure that those IPs aren't recycled first, and that's why he issued the TRO.

The article makes it sound like the judge ruled that the IPs are portable; even the subject says it: "Can a Customer take their IP's with them? (Court says yes!)". The article talks about this as a ruling that may set a precident. It's just a TRO; the judge is putting the brakes on things until he can figure out what's what. There's no ruling, there's no precident, and I expect everything will go back to normal soon.

We aren't helping things....

[ndnet]

Think about it: We all fought for cell phone number portability, but we hate IP number portability.

To the average non-technical person, wouldn't they seem to be a similar right? More importantly, shouldn't we be able to keep IPs? So lazy ISPs have to rewrite software due to lazy Admins... It's a similar right, so if I pay for a static IP, I pay for a static IP.

Perhaps the current economic model and technology behind IP routing is flawed in this respect, but does that really mean that they should be, in fact, locked in? It's a pain to change DNS info. What if you are a site owner but not the admin? What if it's some long gone web design firm? Can the average user really change an IP address, even using most registrar's friendly web interfaces?

This is amazing. We're shouting the same problems that cell phone companies did - too great an expense, need time, not set up for it, unnecessary - but only because it is convenient.

Why even bother arguing a point when you contradict yourself on a mostly parallel point?

I imagine this will start drawing flames, but it's an important point at how hypocritical we, in the technical community, have become when we go from end-user asking for a service to admin denying a similar service. It's just my two cents, so if you don't like it, give me a refund. I'll be waiting.

Re:It just goes to show you...

[mangu]

That's why he issued a temporary restraining order, and not a permanent decision.

HOW temporary is it? How long will it take to arrive at a permanent decision? How about the appeals process? Will it be like this all the way to the Supreme Court?

Besides, what will the plaintif do with their address block? They can take the numbers with them, sure. But how will the judge order other networks to route traffic to those addresses? Does this judge think Taiwan and Germany are in his jurisdiction?

This judge is not only ignorant of technology, he is ignorant of legislation as well. Apparently he has never heard of international agreements.

Re:Technology Savvy Judges Needed...

[ameoba]

The problem is that, in 'preventing damage' to the plaintif, the defendant is getting fucked around. While the TRO is better than an actual judgement, it still creates a bullshit situation for the ISP & all of their upstream providers to deal with.

Look at the facts

[Big Jojo]

Well, I started to read through the court documents, and it looks so far like the ISP who gets to keep the addresses (courtesy of the order) actually has some really serious complaints against its upstream provider, which is why the court had to take some sort of immediate action.

Technically, I understand the knee-jerk response that's all /. seems to cover so far. But seriously -- what's the judge to do, when the upstream ISP is doing stuff like that? They've broken the contract so many times it's not funny, and it seems like this is a pretty minimal step towards letting the victim (== ISP that gets to keep the address, per the order) get disentangled from an especially crapulent upstream provider.

Seems most of the /. crowd would prefer that ISPs be given the kind of powers that God-Emperor Bush seems to want, to abuse anyone they see fit and never be brought to account.

Come on people. Look at the facts.

Hysterical slashclone action here

[MrPeach]

Of all the posts in this thread, only about 5 have a clue what's going on here, the rest have been hysterical rants about how this is going to break the internet, screw over the defendant and other such nonsense.

The defendant was agressively trying to steal this guys business which he's actively trying to relocate, but the defendant is jerking him around and generally acting like an ass.

The TRO was both justified and reasonable. Temporary routings are typical when a large netblock user moves to a new provider.

This guy was more then willing to continue paying them for the redirect service and had negotiated several times with them on contract terms which the defendant agreed to, then completely rewrote when they penned the agreement.

Complete jerk is what I'd call the defendant.

Nothing is black or white

[xrissley]

If you actually go and read the filed papers:
plaintiff is an ISP, and defendant is also an ISP, and was providing facilities and IP addresses to plaintiff, but did try some intimidation manoeuvers or else to gain some of plaintiff's business (well in any case relationship degraded)

plaintiff is moving out and wants to avoid defendant breaking down its business while the move is happening. (because relationships are sour and defendant would wreck the plaintiff's hosting business if it claimed back all IP addresses at once)
Also plaintiff is currently requesting IP addresses from ARIN, but the process is not immediate.

As duly noted in a former thread, it is a temporary restraining order.
To allow plaintiff to move its business and migrate, defendant is barred from withdrawing addresses at once (it is a matter of rerouting whole blocks of IP, not just one IP address).

Then again I just read plaintiff's case, but it shows the issue is more complex.
And it is not a story of "Poor John Doe wants to keep his 145.250.1.25 address, judge gives him the right to do so"

Xrissley

Re:they should get a clue

[dgatwood]

Or they shipped a product that phones home for some reason (authentication, for example) and does so via an IP number rather than DNS. All of a sudden, you're DDOSing somebody's time server....

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more likely ignorance..

Ping is a tool everybody knows, maybe because online games tend to use "ping" to rate network performance or maybe because of IRC.

Anyways, I guess they try it on their CLI and notice it tells you the IP of whoever you ping, and as it does the job they just use it.

I don't think it's a particularly bad thing either, the net can handle a few 64 byte long echo requests and their answers :)

-jmk