• Lu Heng argues that a registry should keep the record of an IP address block without controlling the network that depends on it.
  • He also says networks must be able to change their registration provider without losing addresses they already use.
  • His site lists a note dated 18 September 2026 titled “Need Base and Pre-Approval: The RIR Veto over IPv4 Transfers”, which frames registry approval as a gate rather than a formality.

On heng.lu, Lu Heng states the principle plainly: “A registry should keep the record. It should not control the network.” The sentence is short, but it names the practical problem at the centre of any IPv4 transfer. A buyer and a seller can agree a price, draft a contract and plan a routing change. The record still has to move.

Lu Heng founded LARUS in 2016. His site describes LARUS as providing IP addresses and network services that help businesses keep operating. That operating context matters: an address block is not only a line in a trade; it is part of a network that has customers, services and a routing plan behind it.

Why the record is the real boundary

Lu Heng’s argument is not that registries are irrelevant. It is that keeping a record and controlling a network are different powers. He writes that networks must be able to change their registration provider without losing the addresses they already use. If that is true, the record is stable and portable, and an address holder can renegotiate, consolidate or change a provider without rebuilding the network. If it is not true, the block is only as durable as the relationship behind the record.

The same theme runs through the site’s notes. A note dated 4 July 2026 is titled “The Multi-Stakeholder Mirage: How the Multi-Stakeholder Model Turned Attendance Into Mandate”. The title asks how participation in internet governance becomes a mandate to decide for others. Note 74, dated 18 September 2026, is titled “Need Base and Pre-Approval: The RIR Veto over IPv4 Transfers”. The wording is sharp, but the subject is ordinary: approval is a step in the transfer, and it runs on the registry’s timetable, not the parties’.

What a buyer should ask early

For a buyer, the procedural questions come before the price. Who is the current registrant of record? Which registry will hold the block after the transfer, and what documentation does it expect from each side? Is approval a condition of signing, or does it run in parallel? Who carries the risk if the review takes longer than the contract assumes?

None of those questions can be answered by a price sheet. They can be answered before a deal is priced, which is the difference between a transaction that closes and one that waits in a queue. The lesson is not that the market is only paperwork. It is that the paperwork sits at the point where the market becomes real.

Scarcity made IPv4 address space an asset class. It did not make the registry disappear. Lu Heng’s case is that the record should remain a record: dependable enough to support a market, limited enough not to become control over the networks that use it.