




Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP 802
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... (Score:1, Insightful)
they should get a clue (Score:4, Insightful)
"But I want to live on 115 Baker Street". How can a judge get that dumb.
Ouch... Keep your IP? (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:they should get a clue (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:they should get a clue (Score:5, Insightful)
Technology Savvy Judges Needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what DNS is for (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
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? (Score:1, Insightful)
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? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OK. (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
> 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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OK. (Score:5, Insightful)
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! (Score:0, Insightful)
Average people (Score:3, Insightful)
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. (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OK. (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
Phone number portability (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IP and phone numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
(Try taking your phone number accross a country boundary for instance).
Jeroen
Re:IP and phone numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:they should get a clue (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No different then cell phone number portability (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:2, Insightful)
Horrible! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It just goes to show you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:they should get a clue (Score:2, Insightful)
Not an accurate metaphor (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:they should get a clue (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the hubbub, bub? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the facts (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cool! (Score:1, Insightful)
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