[address-policy-wg] Guidance Requested: Changing the Status of PI Address Space

Dear colleagues,

The RIPE NCC has seen an increase in the number of organisations 
requesting to change the status of IP addresses from "assigned PI" to 
"allocated PA".

At the Address Policy WG session during RIPE 66, we requested guidance 
from the RIPE community on what we should do with these requests. 
Together with the Address Policy WG Chairs, we have decided to seek 
additional input from the WG mailing list.

Background: the requests to turn PI assignments into PA allocations are 
coming from organisations that received a PI assignment in the past and 
have since become LIRs. These requests may also come from LIRs that have 
taken over End User organisations with PI addresses. PA allocations have 
more flexibility than PI assignments. With the scarcity of IPv4 
addresses, organisations are looking to use this space for customer 
assignments or to transfer it, but are prevented from doing so by the 
policy for PI addresses.

Problem: current RIPE Policy does not address the change in status from 
assigned PI to allocated PA.

At RIPE 66, the RIPE NCC suggested the following potential solutions:

A. Allow LIRs to change the status of their PI assignments to PA 
allocations (if equal or larger than the minimum allocation size)
B. Do not allow LIRs to change the status of their PI assignments to PA 
allocations

Please find the RIPE Meeting slides at the following url:
https://ripe66.ripe.net/presentations/176-Address_Policy_WG_RIPE_66.pdf

Thank you in advance for your feedback

Andrea Cima
RIPE NCC