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

* David Conrad

> 2013-03 simply says "get out of the way and let the market work."

For what it's worth, the motivation behind 2013-03 has nothing to do
with "the market" whatsoever. What I'm gunning for, is the bureaucratic
overhead surrounding IPv4 LIR->End User assignments, and obviously
incorrect/obsoleted self-contradictory policy statements.

The reason it makes a "no need" change for allocations (and by extension
for allocation transfers), is that the "need" for allocations are
determined exclusively by an LIRs intention to register assignments.
Once we've removed need evaluation for assignments, there is no point in
maintaining it for allocations, as LIRs could trivially work around that
by proclaiming to the NCC an intention to assign a /1 to their
break-room gaming console. That would be a valid assignment, in turn
causing a valid "need" for a correspondingly sized allocation.

> The main concern appears to be that Evil Greedy Speculators will
> descend upon RIPE like locusts, gobbling up the remaining RIPE IPv4
> free pool in a blink of an eye, and not putting that address space
> into actual use.
> 
> I tend to agree that is a risk.  However, as has been pointed out,
> there is little stopping that now (well, other than penalizing
> honesty).

Actually, you don't even have to be dishonest in order to do this, it is
perfectly possible under today's policy. Here's how:

What this Evil Greedy Speculator needs to do is to register a few
thousand LIRs, since each new LIR is entitled a single /22. Today, each
of those LIRs must demonstrate "need", but this is merely a formality -
if you have an intention of assigning one (1) IPv4 address to some End
User within 12 months, you qualify. I seriously doubt that this
formality is what has prevented the Evil Greedy Speculators from having
done this already.

A few to me more plausible reasons why it hasn't happened so far
include: "too much trouble for too few addresses", "too high RIPE NCC
membership fee to pay for too few addresses", "too high risk of being
shunned and any obtained blocks filtered by the operator community",
"too high risk of being countered by hostile policy", a combination of
the preceding, or simply that "Evil Greedy Speculator is a bogeyman
which doesn't really exist".

Tore