I almost agree with you, and it's the difference between a LIR that holds a /21 and one that holds a /20 that's concerning me, but with a feeling that an extra /22 may be of far more use to an LIR that only holds a /22 to one that has, say, /14 of space. The RIPE community has tried to walk a line between keeping IPv4 addresses back to ensure new entrants can join the market, and not needlessly hoarding addresses. The problem with that approach is that we are forever doomed to make small adjustments to the policy to keep that balance. Give or take a bit of fluctuation when the IANA doles out a bit more returned space, the pool of available IPv4 space the NCC has is about the same now as it was three years ago, but we're about half-way through 185/8: https://www.ripe.net/publications/ipv6-info-centre/about-ipv6/ipv4-exhaustion/ipv4-available-pool-graph Interestingly that graph doesn't appear to show much of a change following the "multiple LIR" decision at the last meeting. One /16 out of the final /8 is reserved for some future need, which means that there are ~16,320 /22s in that block. Let's say that's in the same order of magniture as there are RIPE NCC members (12,830 at the end of 2015), but it's not a large breathing gap. The NCC only has about 8,000 /22s outside 185/8 (at the moment), so it all depends on what we want to classify as distributing them fairly. Another /22 for those that need it? How much will that pool continue to grow? Is there a distribution of number of members by address space they hold? I'm also not sure about the "RIPEness" requirement. It's an interesting metric, but why three rather than four? Should we be encoding in policy a requirement that the NCC can change at will? My personal opinion (working on a network that's offered IPv6 in some way shape or form for 19 years), is that how I run my network is my (or perhaps more importantly, my customers') business. Still, at least it gives us something to talk about in Address Policy. Life would be boring otherwise. Cheers, Rob

Ing. Riccardo Gori
e-mail: rgori@wirem.net
Mobile:  +39 339 8925947
Mobile:  +34 602 009 437
Profile: https://it.linkedin.com/in/riccardo-gori-74201943

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