On Dec 14, 2006, at 2:33 AM, Nick Hilliard wrote: [...]
Could I suggest an alternative based on experience in dealing with new LIRs on the ground? Many new LIRs are smaller operations with relatively small address space usage, and simply wouldn't get to send in a huge number of assignment requests within the first 6 months.
This I agree with.
Because of this, they're just not going to get the hang of RIPE's address space administrative requirements.
This I don't. The RIPE NCC has found that less than 5% of requests need anything more than a comment from them because the person making the request met all of the administrative and policy requirements. LIRs seem to gain this experience pretty fast and they can't make truly large mistakes because the slow start policy restricts the size of LIRs' first few allocations. New LIRs don't really have very much space to waste, so there is relatively little risk.
Would it not therefore be more sensible to automatically increase the AW after either a set number of well-formed assignment requests were sent into RIPE?
That's basically what happens now: evidence based AW raises. It makes AW growth a slow process that involves LIRs sending in huge numbers of request forms that don't really need any input from the RIPE NCC staff. Looking at slide 10 of Filiz's recent presentation at the Region Meeting in Manama, Bahrain, we can see that PA Requests account for about 60% of the requests handled: http://www.ripe.net/meetings/regional/manama-2006/presentations/ stats_policyupdate.pdf - or - http://tinyurl.com/yjushp Relaxing this policy lowers the administrative burden for the vast majority of LIRs while the RIPE NCC retains the ability to select the size of an LIR's allocation, so limiting the damage they can do. The RIPE NCC also has an explicit mandate to audit LIRs (ripe-170), and were this proposal accepted, they would be able to expand this role, providing additional, targeted support for those few LIRs that need it. Regards, -- Leo Vegoda IANA Numbers Liaison