[address-policy-wg] 2009-03 New Draft Document Published (Run Out Fairly)

The impact analysis states:

   Reducing the default allocation and assignment period 
   (in three steps) to three months also means that, in 
   the RIPE NCC service region, the industry as a whole 
   will run out of unassigned IP addresses shortly after 
   the RIPE NCC registry runs out. In principle, no LIR 
   will have an excess amount of free addresses left 
   from previous allocations to grow their business for 
   more than three months.

I think that is a good thing since it preserves the level
playing field nature of RIPE allocation policy. This is
far better than having a sudden drastic policy change take
effect when the last /8 is allocated.

In addition, the 2010 start date gives LIRs enough planning
time to get management approval for activities to mitigate
the problem, such as deploying IPv6 and forcing low-margin
customers off of IPv4 to free the remaining IPv4 addresses
for high-margin customers.

--Michael Dillon