Clarification on Reallocated IPv4 Address Space Related to Dutch Police Order

As reported in previous announcements, the RIPE NCC will go to court in the Netherlands on 29 November 2012 to seek clarification on the procedure taken by the Dutch police on 8 November 2011 when it presented the RIPE NCC with a police order to "lock" registrations in the RIPE Database.

For background on this story, see: Summons of the RIPE NCC Against the State of the Netherlands.

After receiving independent legal advice that the police order had no sufficient legal grounds to force the RIPE NCC to execute the order, the RIPE NCC unlocked the blocks of IPv4 address space on 10 January 2012. We'd like to give you an update on the current situation.

Two of the four address blocks included in the police order (93.188.160.0/21 and 85.255.112/20) were reallocated after the contractual relationship with the member holding the address space was terminated. The member's account was closed and the space was deregistered according to ripe-541, "Closure of LIR and Deregistration of Internet Number Resources". The address space was quarantined for six weeks before being returned to the RIPE NCC's available pool of IPv4 address space. It was then randomly reallocated to a new resource holder according to normal allocation procedures.

As the RIPE NCC nears IPv4 exhaustion, it will reduce the quarantine period of returned address space accordingly to ensure that there is no more IPv4 address space available before the last /8 is reached. The  RIPE NCC recognises that this shortened quarantine could lead to routability problems and offers its members assistance to reduce this.

More information about the RIPE NCC's Resource Quality Assistance.