[address-policy-wg] 2012-04 New Policy Proposal (PI Assignments from the last /8)

Remco,

> Alright then, for the sake of argument I'll oppose until I see some
> convincing numbers. Back in the original last /8 discussion the rationale
> for choosing a /22 was that it would get us about 16k final allocations,
> or 1 for every NCC member and room for the membership to double in size.

we need to move away from this idea of how to expand the RIPE NCC
membership and think more in terms of how to serve the RIPE community.
There may be a good deal of overlap between these two goals, but they are
not necessarily the same.

There is no doubt that if address space can be assigned as PI, then this
will reduce the amount available to LIRs and that this is not a good thing.
 On the other hand, who is to say that a LIR deserves IP address space more
than an End User who needs a PI assignment?  As it stands, the "last /8"
policy makes a default unilateral judgement in favour of the LIR.  This
strikes me as being an extraordinary position to take.

> Now, we have a number of new realities:
> 
> - final /8 applies to all v4 address space when it kicks in, including
> space that gets returned later;
> - It also applies to v4 address space that has not been allocated or
> assigned by RIPE NCC at that date;
> - An additional 'special case' block was set aside for IXPs.

The special case IXP block is neither here nor there.  A /16 makes no
difference in the grand scheme of things.

What's relevant here is that as a result of 2011-03, the "last /8" policy
would be more appropriately called "the dregs" policy - the ipv4 policies
which apply to the last /8 will become permanent fixtures applying to all
future address space after depletion.  Perhaps they won't apply to a huge
amount of address space, but there will be a constant and small turnover of
address blocks reclaimed by the RIPE NCC for the foreseeable future.

Turns out, this is a pretty fundamental change.  We had, as a community,
created a last /8 policy because we believed that there was something
special about the addresses in the bottom of the barrel.  Then we realised
that there would be a permanent small trickle of addresses into this barrel
and that there was really no such thing as the "last /8".

In a roundabout sort of way, this policy floats the idea that the entire
concept of the last /8 being special is slightly artificial, and that
really they're not "special" addresses, they're just "addresses".  Same as
all the other addresses we've assigned, allocated and used all along.

The only difference we've really made is that we've narrowed the mouth of
the toothpaste tube so that more people might be able to get a taste.

Taking a slightly different viewpoint, 2012-04 makes the last /8 policy
more similar to the "run out fairly" model, except that instead of limiting
on the basis of expected use within X months, we're putting some hard
limits in.

> This all impacts, in a positive or negative way, how much future there is
> in our final /8 policy. I'd like to think that we made a well-considered
> decision back then, and if we're going to make a fundamental change like
> this one I'd like to see some numbers in an impact analysis. Based on
> current distribution, how much space do we anticipate will fall under the
> final /8 policy, how much of it will be allocated in /22 PA and how much
> will be allocated in /24 PI? Given the 'one size fits nobody' nature of
> the final /8 policy, this would be about the number of
> allocations/assignments done so far, not the size.

yes, numbers would be interesting and I agree that the impact analysis
should include some form of run-out projection of the type you're
suggesting.  I don't know if these numbers are going to make a fundamental
difference to whether this is a good or a bad policy, but no harm will come
from having them to hand.

btw, do you have any criteria for evaluating these numbers if/when they are
produced by the NCC?

> Finally, I would like to hear how this proposal correlates to the charge
> for PI space - the good old 2007-01 chestnut. For post-depletion LIRs, the
> grapes would be quite sour if one could pick up a quarter of the available
> resources for about one twentieth of the price. Should "Final /8 PIv4"
> have a separate price tag?

This is quite a different discussion, and is part of the more fundamental
issue of why we have PI and PA in the first place.  If they're just
addresses, why does the RIPE community want them packaged up and labelled
with different colours?  What do these colours mean, and how will this
impact on ipv6 PI and PA assignment policy?  How will it affect the RIPE
NCC budget?  How can we make the PA and PI charging schemes more aligned?
Or even fully aligned?

These are all interesting and relevant questions to both the RIPE NCC and
the RIPE community, and I believe it to be critically important to the RIPE
NCC that they be asked and answered soon.

But they are out of scope for this policy proposal.  Right now, we have a
case of significant bias towards LIRs and this is what this policy proposal
seeks to redress.

Nick