[address-policy-wg] A comment on 2008-03 & 2007-09

Michael,

On Jun 1, 2008, at 2:59 AM, <michael.dillon at bt.com> <michael.dillon at 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