[address-policy-wg] Policy Proposal : "Run Out Fairly"

Dear colleagues,

attached you will find a policy proposal we call "Run Out Fairly".
It is based on a discussion instigated by your's truly during the 
open policy hour at the latest RIPE meeting.

This is a proposal to gradually reduce the allocation and assignment
periods in step with the expected life time of the IPv4 unallocated pool
in order to address the perception of unfairness once the pool has run
out. 

The proposal is not intended to stretch the lifetime of the unallocated
pool. 

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. 

We thank Filiz Yilmaz for her help, invite discussion of this proposal 
and look forward to high quality comments.

For the authors

Daniel Karrenberg

PS: Can we refer to this proposal by name and not by number? ;-)
-------------- next part --------------
1. Number (will be assigned by the RIPE NCC)

2. Policy Proposal Name:        Run Out Fairly

3. Authors

a. name: Daniel Karrenberg
b. e-mail: daniel.karrenberg at ipe.net
c. organisation: RIPE NCC

a. name: Niall O'Reilly
b. e-mail: Niall.oReilly at ucd.ie
c. organisation: University College Dublin

a. name: Nigel Titley
b. e-mail: nigel at titley.com  
c: organisation: Easynet
                         Nigel Titley serves on the RIPE NCC board of directors.

a. name: Randy Bush
b. e-mail: randy at psg.com
c. organisation: IIJ


4. Proposal Version: 1.5
5. Submission Date: 6 April 2009
6. Suggested RIPE Working Group for discussion and publication: Address Policy
7. Proposal type: Modify 
8. Policy term: Renewable



9. Summary of proposal

This is a proposal to gradually reduce the allocation and assignment
periods in step with the expected life time of the IPv4 unallocated pool
in order to address the perception of unfairness once the pool has run
out. 

The proposal is not intended to stretch the lifetime of the unallocated
pool. 

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. 


10.  Policy text (from ripe-449) 

a. Current:

5.0 Policies and Guidelines for Allocations
...

The RIPE NCC allocates enough address space to LIRs to meet their needs
for a period of up to 12 months. 

6.3 Utilisation Rates

Assignments' immediate utilisation should be at least 25% of the
assigned space.  After one year, this should be at least 50% of the
space unless special circumstances are defined. 

b. New:

5.0 Policies and Guidelines for Allocations
...

The RIPE NCC allocates enough address space to LIRs to meet their needs
for a period of up to 12 months. 

Starting on 1 July 2010, a gradual reduction in the allocation period
will be applied as follows:

As of 1 July 2010, the RIPE NCC will start allocating enough address
space to LIRs to meet their needs for a period of up to nine months. 

As of 1 January 2011, the RIPE NCC will start allocating enough address
space to LIRs to meet their needs for a period of up to six months. 

As of 1 July 2011, the RIPE NCC will start allocating enough address
space to LIRs to meet their needs for a period of up to three months. 


6.0 Policies and Guidelines for Assignments

The End Users must be assigned with enough address space to meet their
needs for a period of up to 12 months. 

Starting on 1 July 2010, a gradual reduction in the assignment period
will be applied as follows:

As of 1 July 2010, the RIPE NCC or the LIRs will start assigning enough
address space to End Users to meet their needs for a period of up to
nine months. 

As of 1 January 2011, the RIPE NCC or the LIRs will start assigning
enough address space to End Users to meet their needs for a period of up
to six months. 

As of 1 July 2011, the RIPE NCC or the LIRs will start assigning enough
address space to End Users to meet their needs for a period of up to
three months. 


6.3 Utilisation Rates

The utilisation rate of an assignment must be at least 50% of the total
space half way through the assignment period applied at the time of the
assignment.  For example, in the case of a 12-month assignment period,
half of the total space assigned must be utilised after six months. 


11.  Rationale:

In order to avoid possible oversight or confusion, we point out this
proposal makes the time periods governing allocations and assignments
identical immediately upon adoption.  Both periods will then be reduced
according to a fixed time scheme.  The assignment utilisation rate
requires 50% utilisation not, as formerly, after one year, but rather at
the halfway point of that period and there is no longer a specific
target for the immediate utilisation.  See below for the rationale
behind this. 

a. Arguments supporting the proposal

As the RIPE NCC IPv4 unallocated pool runs out, the current policy will
allow for the very last allocations to be made for the purpose of
deployment up to 12 months afterwards.  Once the unallocated pool has in
fact run out, there will be some users that just received up to 24
months worth of address space and some who will receive nothing.  This
will very likely cause concerns because a quite valid perception of this
event is that one user will be able to grow their business for another
12 month while the next one in the queue will be stuck.  There is a also
a real potential for a very large address space user to receive a huge
allocation under this policy which pre-empts a lot of requests from
smaller users ; this will greatly increase the perception of unfairness.
RIPE and our self-governance can very well come under serious adverse
criticism when this happens.  We will appear to be have been quite
careless and short-sighted in the eyes of those who perceive this
unfairness.  There are some scenarios where a large number of RIPE NCC
members will feel this way, as will governments and regulators. 

During RIPE 57, one of the authors presented this rationale during the
Address Policy Working Group.  The presentation, including data about
allocation sizes between 2001 and 2007, can be found at:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-57/presentations/Karrenberg-The_Very_Last_IPv4_Allocations_Some_Concerns_About_Perceived_Unfairness.ufxZ.pdf

The feedback in that session suggested that this concrete proposal be
developed. 


The principle of distributing address space according to demonstrated
need is sound should not be changed.  In order to address the unfairness
we propose to reduce the period over which the need is recognised
roughly in correlation with the expected life time of the unallocated
pool.  This addresses the unfairness without abandoning the principle. 

The same principle should apply to assignments for both Provider
Independent (PI) and Provider Aggregatable (PA) address space for End
Users that can be made directly by the RIPE NCC or the LIRs. 

The exact date of the exhaustion of the RIPE NCC's IPv4 unallocated pool
is hard to predict.  It will also be influenced by other policy changes
that are currently being discussed.  A widely accepted projection of
unallocated pool exhaustion dates is published by Geoff Huston, Chief
Scientist of APNIC.  His projection for the exhaustion of the RIPE NCC
pool can be found at http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/fig29b.png

The time line proposed here aims to set a schedule that roughly follows
these projections and is simple and predictable at the same time.  No
one can predict the actual point in time when the RIPE NCC pool will be
exhausted.  We propose not to base policy on changing predictions but
rather to decide on a reasonable schedule today that is fixed now and
thus predictable. 

We stress that this proposal aims to address only the perceived
unfairness we outline above.  The proposal explicitly does not aim to
increase the lifetime of the unallocated pool nor to address any other
issue. 

The proposal is independent of other proposals to reserve address space
for transition purposes and/or new entrants.  It can be implemented
independently these.  In particular there is no inter-dependency with
"Use of final /8" (2008-6).  The time schedule of this proposal need
only be updated if further policy changes drastically change the
expected date of exhaustion of the unallocated pool. 

Note well that the proposal sets higher allocation rate targets that are
consistent with allocation and assignment sizes immediately on adoption.
There no longer is a requirement for 'immediate' utilisation of 25%. 
The rationale for this change is twofold: firstly it aligns both periods
which makes application of this policy significantly more straight
forward than it would otherwise be; secondly it sets a goals for
assignment utilisation half way through the period rather at the
beginning and after the fixed period of one year.  This is based on
feedback from the RIPE NCC registration services staff. 


b. Arguments opposing the proposal

Some may argue that reduced allocation and assignment periods will be
too short to sustain efficiency in routing and ISP, provider and LIR
operations.  However, we believe that towards the end of the available
IPv4 pool, it is the responsibility of all, to make sure the allocation
and assignment of the resources remain perceived as "fair".
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 20090406-run-out-fairly-submit.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 67797 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: </ripe/mail/archives/address-policy-wg/attachments/20090406/d75ba244/attachment.pdf>