[address-policy-wg] openness in RIR policies

On 9 Nov 2012, at 13:23, sandrabrown at ipv4marketgroup.com wrote:

> Further, other RIR policies need to morph to support open-ness.

Please explain. In what way do RIR policies not support openness or transparency. Or are not open and transparent enough? Feel free to submit proposals which improve these principles.

> For example, RIR's should not reclaim unused IP's now that they have value. 

This has nothing to do with openness or RIR policies. I think you're mistaken too.

First off, it's IP addresses, not "IPs". Second, current policy says LIRs are supposed to return unused resources to their RIR when they no longer need/use them. Can you provide an example  where an RIR has reclaimed unused addresses from an LIR? [Some address space has of course been recovered by the RIRs and IANA. However to the best of my knowledge that's pretty much been unused legacy space that had been given to organisations that no longer exist.] An RIR has no way of knowing definitively if an LIR is using its address space or not unless the LIR confirms that. Finally, whatever action an RIR takes over an LIR's unused address space is decided by RIR policy, not whether those addresses "have value". For some definition of "have value". AFAICT nobody's suggesting a policy change so RIRs can reclaim addresses (and re-sell them?) now that a market in v4 space is emerging.

Now whether an LIR will hand back its unused space or not is an entirely different matter from RIR policy or its openness. Perhaps those LIRs will want to trade their unused space. Perhaps not. That's largely a matter for them and their consciences.