[changed mail client alias\author to my name, apologies for duplication]

Hi,

Re: 'who does IPv6 hoarding really hurt' or 'what's the danger', we should learn from some very harsh real-life lessons that happened with IPv4 stockpiling.

- when IPv4 was plentiful, a number of RIPE members we able to hoard vast volumes of IPv4 and distribute large IPv4 network prefixes (e.g. full /18s) to their customers but provide little to no technical services (became de facto local RIRs) 

- this was attractive to their customers at the time - often network operators - because the RIPE members would lease the address space for a much lower price than a RIPE NCC membership fee

- as their customers became increasingly dependant on those IPv4 network prefixes over time to run their operations, the RIPE members abused their power and raised the lease costs to absolute extortionate and unaffordable amounts - often to sell the parent allocation on the IPv4 market

This is in addition to conflicting with RIPE IPv6 goals and policy, and reducing the RIPE NCC's ability to check and verify that the address space is being used in line with RIPE IPv6 goals and policy.

Do we really want to sleepwalk into a similar situation with IPv6? If not, how can we proactively safeguard IPv6 from such abuse while ensuring easy access to IPv6 for real deployments? Change IPv6 transfer policy, and/or lower the RIPE NCC membership fee (e.g. a cheaper IPv6-only membership category)?

Regards,

James 

apwg co-chair