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

On 3/21/13 17:30 , Sander Steffann wrote:
> Hi,
>
>>> I also think that if adopted, this proposal would preclude an
>>> inter-RIR transfer market in that the "needs test" is required in the
>>> other regions, and that would mean that the RIPE region policies would
>>> not be "compatible" as called for in the other regions transfer
>>> policies.
>>>
>>> In other words, does 2013-03 preclude 2012-02 (if adopted) from being effective?
>>
>> Yes and no - it depends on the policy in effect in the other region
>> space is being transferred to or from. I'm not intimately familiar with
>> those, but I *believe* that ARIN would be incompatible
>
> Voluntary evaluation of need? It would be a service from the NCC. Something like: you don't need to prove need for the NCC, but if you want advice/evaluation the NCC will assist you and perform the needs based analysis. The NCC has a lot of expertise in this area. Even when showing/documenting need is not required anymore that knowledge could benefit LIRs. It could be useful for new LIRs that need a bit of guidance when assigning addresses to customers.

My understanding of the intent of the ARIN's policy is NO that would not 
be acceptable, and such scenarios did come up during the ARIN 
community's discussion of Inter-RIR transfers.  If it were acceptable, 
then someone with operational need could apply to transfer resource from 
the ARIN region and then transfer them to someone else without 
operational need once the resources were in the RIPE region, and out of 
ARIN's control.  Rinse, repeat.  If this were found to be acceptable, I 
highly expect there would be a policy proposal in the ARIN region to 
plug the leak, so to speak.

The RIPE region is free to manage the resources under its control as it 
see fit.  But so is the ARIN region, and deciding under what 
circumstances resources can be transferred out of a region is a 
perfectly reasonable exercise of such control.

I will say there are good points and reasonable objections on both sides 
of this argument.  There are those that are flat out opposed to a 
transfer market under any circumstances, and there are those that oppose 
any interference with the market.  Operational need, has been the 
fundamental tenet of address assignment policy all the way back to the 
beginning.  Even when whole class-As (/8s today) were handed out it was 
by operational need, there was a completely different definition of 
operational need than we use today, but there was operational need.

Finally, my suggestion is operational need is should be maintained as 
the basis for IP address assignments, but how we measure and define that 
operational need should be carefully reviewed and probably evolve in 
light of IPv4 run-out.  We were burning through class-Bs (/16s today) 
back in the mid 90's, so we decided we needed a new functional 
definition for operational need.  We came up with slow-start and 
allocation windows based on historical use.  With IPv6 we created a 
completely different definition for operational need too.  Nothing says 
we can't find a new functional definition for operational need that 
meets the operational realities in the face of IPv4 run-out.

I neither support or oppose the policy, as I do not represent any 
resources used within the RIPE region.

Thanks.

-- 
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