Hi Nigel, Good questions, thanks.
The question is that reading through the rationale I came across this statement
"The benefits are that the RIPE community may speedily adopt a global policy proposal if it wishes, and that doing so will not delay the process of establishing consensus if further modifications are requested in other RIR communities."
I can't see how the addition of an extra holding state can allow the policy to be adopted. Probably I'm confused, but surely this proposal just allows a proposal to be held in the new proposed state until all regions are in step. It won't allow the policy to be adopted any earlier?
I see what you mean. Let me characterise the problem like this: At this moment, if the RIPE community reaches consensus on a global policy, and it is adopted in our region before all other regions have adopted it, then there is still a risk that another region may propose a change that we want to adopt. This risk could, in principle, slow down the process of getting consensus in the RIPE region. The object of this proposal is to mitigate that risk, by allowing a proposal to be adopted in the RIPE region specifically, but ensuring that it can be revised if an alternative surfaces and reaches consensus. But a global policy of course can't be implemented until it has been adopted in all regions, and this proposal would not directly affect the speed at which that occurs.
The note of caution is that there is no timeout on this state so we potentially have a policy held here for ever.
Good point. There are two trapdoors though that can be "manually" triggered in the event that a policy seems to be stuck - one by the RIPE WG chairs, the other by the ASO AC. I have the feeling that adding a fixed timeout would probably not help the process, which can be lengthy. Does that sound reasonable? All the best, Dave -- Dave Wilson, Senior Network Engineer HEAnet Limited, Ireland's Education and Research Network 1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin 1 Registered in Ireland, no 275301 tel: +353-1-660 9040 fax: +353-1-660 3666 web: http://www.heanet.ie/ H323 GDS:0035301101738 PGP: 1024D/C757ADA9