[address-policy-wg] 2010-03 New Policy Proposal (Global Policy State in RIPE PDP)

Hi Nigel,

Good questions, thanks.

> The question is that reading through the rationale I came across this
> statement
> 
> "The benefits are that the RIPE community may speedily adopt a global
> policy proposal if it wishes, and that doing so will not delay the
> process of establishing consensus if further modifications are requested
> in other RIR communities."
> 
> I can't see how the addition of an extra holding state can allow the
> policy to be adopted. Probably I'm confused, but surely this proposal
> just allows a proposal to be held in the new proposed state until all
> regions are in step. It won't allow the policy to be adopted any earlier?

I see what you mean. Let me characterise the problem like this:

At this moment, if the RIPE community reaches consensus on a global policy, and 
it is adopted in our region before all other regions have adopted it, then 
there is still a risk that another region may propose a change that we want to 
adopt. This risk could, in principle, slow down the process of getting 
consensus in the RIPE region.

The object of this proposal is to mitigate that risk, by allowing a proposal to 
be adopted in the RIPE region specifically, but ensuring that it can be revised 
if an alternative surfaces and reaches consensus. But a global policy of course 
can't be implemented until it has been adopted in all regions, and this 
proposal would not directly affect the speed at which that occurs.

> The note of caution is that there is no timeout on this state so we
> potentially have a policy held here for ever.

Good point. There are two trapdoors though that can be "manually" triggered in 
the event that a policy seems to be stuck - one by the RIPE WG chairs, the 
other by the ASO AC. I have the feeling that adding a fixed timeout would 
probably not help the process, which can be lengthy. Does that sound reasonable?

All the best,
Dave

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