This proposal expands the RIPE NCC's ability to assign number resources for temporary purposes and allows the RIPE NCC to reserve pools of IP addresses and Autonomous System (AS) Numbers, which can be used by the RIPE NCC to make temporary direct assignments to End Users.

Key to this proposal is that all temporary resources assigned under this policy proposal are assigned on a strictly temporary basis, ensuring that they can be quickly re-assigned to other End Users after the assignment period expires.

The proposal is not intended to stretch the lifetime of the unallocated pool for assignments or allocations of indefinite duration.

The proposal is independent of other proposals to reserve address space for transition purposes and/or new entrants. It can be implemented independently of these.

Rationale:

The RIPE NCC currently has the ability to assign IP addresses on a temporary basis for experimental purposes. This policy proposal creates a long-term basis for opening up temporary number resource assignments to a wider variety of End Users.

Furthermore, it is expected that little or no resources will be available for this purpose in the RIR IPv4 address space or 16-bit AS Number pools unless a reservation is made.

Most number resource assignments are made on the basis of indefinite duration, which means that unless the address space is returned to the RIPE NCC, they can only provide value to one End User body or organisation. However, temporary resource assignments can be made repeatedly to any number of different End Users, ensuring that such a pool would provide permanent value to the RIPE community.

a. Arguments supporting the proposal

Temporary resource assignments provide a useful facility for End Users who require a specific amount of address space and/or AS Number on a strictly time-limited basis. As the number resource can be re-used again and again, the amount of address space or number of AS Numbers that would need to be set aside for temporary assignment pools would be small when measured against the current number resource run-rates. On this basis, creating an address pool for this purpose would have a negligible effect on the final RIPE NCC IANA-supplied IPv4 address pool depletion date and the 16-bit AS Number depletion date.

b. Arguments Opposing the Proposal

It could be argued that if there were resources consistently available in a temporary assignment pool, that these unassigned resources could be better used by assigning or allocating them to an End User or LIR on an indefinite basis, and that by not assigning them, LIRs and other End Users would be disadvantaged or discriminated against.

If a temporary assignment was used at any time for malicious ends, the resources used for this purpose could end up on blacklists and the value of the resources would be significantly diminished for future End Users.