[address-policy-wg] 2013-03 New Policy Proposal (No Need - Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Cleanup)

Hi Alex,

* Alex Le Heux

> This proposal is a gigantic leap in the right direction.

Thank you. I hope that the WG chairs and I can interpret this as a voice
of support, despite what you write about PI below?

> Any future IPv4 policy should describe what to do with PI assignments
> [...]
> Leaving them in limbo is not a good idea.

I want to avoid having my policy proposal fix "everything" at the same
time. While it may be tempting to have it fix issues A, B, C, D, E, F,
and G in one go, the risk with that is that the community doesn't agree
with, say, F - and on that basis alone killing the entire proposal.

Therefore I want to limit the scope of changes as much as reasonably
possible, so that we can discuss the actual issues only without getting
side-tracked over another "nice to have" change that might prove
controversial.

For what it's worth my primary motivation for submitting the proposal
(i.e, the "A" issue, or the itch I'm actually trying to scratch) is to
get rid of the need justification bureaucracy relating to making PA
assignments. In a nutshell: I know what my customers need for the
contract periods they sign up for, and I want to be able to assign that
space to them without being constrained by RIPE policies and without
having to fill out any RIPE paperwork.

The "B" issue it tackles, is getting rid of the need justification
bureaucracy for [transfers of] allocations. This is not the main goal,
but due to A it would make absolutely no sense to leave it in -
otherwise any LIR could just synthesise whatever allocation need they
wanted to (without actually running afoul of the policy).

The "C" issue fixed by my proposal, the clean-up and restructuring, is
due to A and B being so deeply intertwined in so many parts of the
policy. I first tried to «surgically remove» need justification text
from all parts of the policy in order to solve A and B, and leave
everything else intact, but I soon realised that it was easier to just
delete all the old and obsolete sections completely, and (if necessary)
replacing them with whatever the currently active policy (i.e., the
"last /8" policy) had to say.

> The cleanest, and most radical, solution would of course be to say
> "addresses are addresses" and do away with the difference between PI and
> PA and strip all references the "PA" and "PI" from the policy and RIPE DB.

I've heard talk about such a «PA/PI unification» proposal, at least for
IPv6, but I don't think anything was ever actually submitted to the PDP.
I would prefer that such a change could be proposed and discussed
independently of 2013-03, though. That said: The eventual passing of
2013-03 would be a great benefit to such a proposal, as the amount of
policy text that needs to be changed would decrease dramatically.

See also:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/address-policy-wg/2011-October/006496.html

Best regards,
Tore Anderson