[address-policy-wg] 2013-03 New Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (No Need - Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Clean up)

Hi again Filiz,

> In order not to have people get lost between our inline comments, I
> will only attempt to respond to you taking quotes from your mail. 
> Apologies if this distorts the logical thought process you had put
> in.

No problem, I'll do the same. :-)

> Those principle based registration and address management
> requirements were in the old policy between the lines, pointing to
> people notions like anti-hoarding practices through "need based"
> requirements.

Actually, you don't have to read between the lines to find the reason
for "need based"/"anti-hoarding". It is explicitly stated in the policy,
specifically section 3.0.3: «To maximise the lifetime of the public IPv4
address space».

And this of course made perfect sense. If the LIRs had been free to grab
as much as they pleased with no checks and bounds, that would in all
likelihood have caused the NCC's public pool of IPv4 space, and by
extension the IANA's, to deplete many many years ago. It was all about
delaying the Tragedy of the Commons as much as possible. Had we as a
community done a much better job with IPv6, we could have avoided it
from happening altogether, but that ship has sailed - the Tragedy
occurred last September.

> So once you take those bits out, you also take those notions and
> principles out of the policy. That was my point and so I disagree
> that your proposal does not change anything. In fact it is bringing a
> big change, changing address delegation from "I want it because I
> need it on a network"

There is a difference between a Service Provider and an Internet
Registry. The former operates networks, the latter delegates numbers.
Often a single organisation fills both roles, but this is not a
requirement, just a convenience. You could easily run an LIR from your
laptop or tablet in the local coffee shop - all you need is an e-mail
account, really (and money to pay the membership fee). So when it comes
to allocations, "need" isn't borne from "I need it on a network", but
rather "I need it so I can assign it to an End User".

> "I want it and I am a member of the RIPE NCC so I can get it

Get it from *where* and *who*, exactly?

>> What constitutes "good address management" is something left to the
>> LIRs to decide for themselves.
> 
> I tend to disagree with this too. LIRs are members of the RIPE NCC
> but policies are developed by the entire RIPE Community, which is a
> bigger stakeholder. Those views should be reflected in the policy to
> be remembered and documented by the LIRs.

Clearly, if the RIPE Community makes a policy that says X, then the LIRs
must do X. But *as of right now*, the policy does not define any
principles of "good address management", hence, LIRs are free to do what
they wish.

> I see your point but policy does not mean "policing". To my
> knowledge, RIPE NCC never sent agents to LIR premises to check if the
> justification they documented fit with the reality or not.

Indeed, the whole "needs-based" system is entirely built on trust. The
NCC is not the IPv4 Police (and I wouldn't want them to be either for
simple cost/benefit reasons).

> And this still does not mean that policy is not going to be there to
> remind people that this is a common pool of resources we are dealing
> with and its management requires some degree of responsibility. We
> might as well then not have a policy document at all and just have a
> click, pay and get your resource button on the RIPE NCC website.

Again, get that resource from *where* and *who*?

> If I am an LIR and I go to the RIPE NCC and ask for a resource [...]

...the RIPE NCC necessarily say "sorry, we're fresh out". (Except if you
didn't pick up your last /22 yet, see below.)

> I am not a lawyer, but hypothetically speaking, if your proposal gets
> accepted there is some (again totally hypothetical…) potential that
> some LIRs may chose to rush and get whatever is left in the NCC pool
[...]
> And then these LIRs who were lucky to get all the space they wanted

No, this is completely impossible, and to be honest I am starting to
wonder if you are familiar with the "last /8 policy" at all, or if you
are under the impression that 2013-03 proposes to remove it (it does
not). In a nutshell, it is the following:

An LIR can get one (1) /22, no more, no less. Sizing according to "need"
has *already been abandoned*; it doesn't matter one bit if the LIR's
actual need is for 1 address or 1.000.000.000.000 addresses - the only
thing you'll get, ever, is 1.024.

The only way an LIR could possibly get "all the space they wanted", is
if they wanted 1.024 addresses or less. But in that case, they would be
able to get it under today's policy, too.

Best regards,
Tore Anderson