Michael, On Jun 1, 2008, at 2:59 AM, <michael.dillon@bt.com> <michael.dillon@bt.com
wrote: I don't think that IANA would ever do this because it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. Since I have never heard IANA being accused of gross incompetence before,
Well, IANA staff get accused of this less often these days (:-)).
I have to believe that when they receive that request from RIR A, they will ask all the other RIRs about how many addresses they need before allocating anything.
Current policy does not dictate IANA do this. As the v4 free pool is depleted (particularly as the free pool approaches 10 /8s), I suspect (hope?) there will be greater communication amongst the RIRs.
In fact, I expect IANA to do this well before the last 2 /8 blocks. Then, after consulting all RIRs, I expect IANA to publish their intentions and ask for comments before allocating any blocks.
This would be a significant change to existing policy and as such, is not something IANA could implement unilaterally. Whether there is sufficient time left for this to be defined as a "global policy" might be an interesting question.
This is just good business practice and I don't think that the RIRs need to write policies which tell IANA to do this.
I suspect you misunderstand the relationship between the RIRs and IANA. Regards, -drc