The Toll Grows Louder

ARIN Issues Statements About Future Allocation Policies - SEO to blame?

A few weeks ago I blogged about ARIN’s IPv6 notice. Interestingly — and I don’t take credit for this, by the way –ARIN has now decided to attempt to proactively address the threat of an evolving secondary market for IP space. As IPv4 addresses are a limited resource, it only makes sense that individuals and groups will try to capitalize on the coming number crunch as an opportunity to create a black or grey market for unused IP space. ARIN has issued a statement (read here) that reinforces their intention to adhere to the spirit of the original policies and basically lays down the gauntlet for other registries to do the same. The paragraph that best sums it up for me is:

The purpose of this memorandum is to assure the community that the democratic principles of Internet governance will be adhered to by ARIN, the Regional Internet Registry serving Canada, many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands, and the United States.(7) The resource-allocation policy under which ARIN operates has been produced through an open, transparent, and democratic process over more than a decade. ARIN is fully dedicated to preserving universal access and stable functionality of the Internet, and our policies do not encourage profit-driven speculation in the Internet addresses.

Because the system relies on a certain amount of self-governance, we have to rely on the people running these registries and their willingness to resist market temptations and continue to enforce the current policies that are set forth. We also have to rely on the honesty of the people requesting IP allocations from the registries.

As the situation tightens, it will be interesting to see how the various registries respond. Ultimately, the market will demand that we shift away from the IPv4 space altogether and into the IPv6 space. At The Planet, part of our strategic planning is centered around being ready for this shift.

We see more and more requests for IP space for non-traditional reasons — SEO being a primary culprit. There is a lot of confusion out there about what variables are used in assigning rankings on the various search engines, and it appears to be driving more and more people to grab as much IP space as possible to try and improve their rankings. Higher ranking = more $$$$.

If the search engine companies really care about the Internet and its usability, it would behoove them to issue a statement clarifying the importance — or lack thereof — of IP addresses in the ranking of search engines. So that we have a definitive answer on whether or not it really matters. Until then, my fear is that the problem is only going to get worse, and we’ll be running out of IP addresses sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, I would encourage end users to really research the topic themselves before asking for that extra IP allocation. You might find out that you’re paying for something you don’t really need.

- Will

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 5:00 am and is filed under Tech Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.