Hello Scott, * Scott Leibrand
While I support the goals of 2013-03 in a post-IPv4-depletion world, we are currently in an uncomfortable intermediate state where IPv4 depletion has occurred in some regions (RIPE and APNIC) but not in others (ARIN, LACNIC, and AfriNIC). I think it will be wise to wait until IPv4 depletion to remove of (at least some) needs requirements in those regions that still have an IPv4 free pool.
Geoff Huston's http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html projects that global IPv4 depletion won't happen until July 2020, when AfriNIC is set to deplete as the last of the five RIRs. That is a *long* time to keep around a bureaucracy that no longer serves any purpose.
As a result of the fact of remaining RIR free pools, and the current policy and sentiment in the ARIN region that inter-RIR IPv4 transfers should occur only to organizations/regions that justify need for the addresses (to avoid a run on said free pool), I think it would be wise to do something like this:
- First, pass an inter-RIR transfer policy in the RIPE region that is compatible with both the APNIC and ARIN inter-RIR transfer policies (i.e. has some form of needs justification). - Second, make sure that RIPE's transfer policy serves all organizations in the RIPE region, including those who in the past got PI space from RIPE. - Third, relax the ARIN region's inter-RIR transfer policy such that after IPv4 depletion in the ARIN region, transfers are allowed to regions with policies like 2013-03. - Fourth, pass something along the lines of 2013-03 in the RIPE region (to take effect) after IPv4 depletion has occurred in the ARIN region. - Fifth, update policy in other regions as well to align policy with the needs of a post-IPv4-depletion world.
I'm more than happy to help drive #3 and eventually #5 in the ARIN region.
While I see and acknowledge that 2013-03 conflicts with ARIN's need requirement for inter-region transfers, and that this is a valid argument against the proposed policy, I do feel that this argument alone is not strong enough to to stop 2013-03, for the following reasons: 1) It is entirely dependent on proposal 2012-02 passing, which is far from a certainty. 2012-02 has received at best a lukewarm response from the community - according to the chairs, it has, quote, «far from consensus». Should 2012-02 not pass, 2013-03's conflict with ARIN's need requirement is completely irrelevant. 2) According to Ingrid Wijte's MENOG12 presentation (http://www.menog.org/presentations/menog-12/127-IPv4_Transfers-RIPE_NCC_Upda...), there have been only a measly 17 permanent transfers in the RIPE region in the last three months. It would surprise me greatly if the amount of assignments having been made by the LIRs in the same period is not at least two orders of magnitude more. Choosing to uphold the need justification and documentation bureaucracy for all those assignments that we LIRs perform on a frequent basis, for the sole purpose of allowing only one specific flavour of the very rarely used allocation transfer mechanism to work, seems to me to fail a very basic cost-benefit analysis. 3) The RIPE community's benefit of allowing transfers from the ARIN region into the RIPE region is only obvious due to the fact that ARIN still has remaining free space in their address pool. «They've still got more space, let's go grab as much of it as we can before it's all gone!» It is not certain that it is a net benefit to the RIPE community to allow transfers with depleted regions. The result may very well be that more address space is being transferred *out* of our region, than what is coming in - further exacerbating our depletion ordeal. This uncertainty makes the cost-benefit analysis I mentioned in #2 even more clear in favour of 2013-03. According to Geoff Huston, ARIN looks set to deplete exactly one year from now. Keeping in mind that 2012-02 appears to still have a long way to go in the PDP, the time period during which the benefit of allowing free trade with ARIN is obvious is only going to be a few months at most. Quite possibly, ARIN will deplete before 2012-02 gets implemented, if so the obvious beneficial period will not exist at all. 4) Again, ARIN is soon depleting. As I mentioned in the proposal itself, this might cause the ARIN community to do a reality adjustment similar to 2013-03, and rescind the need requirement for inter-region transfers. After all, there is little point in trying to prevent other regions from "bleeding them dry" if they have nothing left anyway. So that's your item #3, essentially. If you're willing to suggest that to the ARIN community now, I'm all for it. Best regards, Tore Anderson