[address-policy-wg] About the /22 allocation limitation

Hi Daniel,

> please take care of the LIRs that only have a /22 and will never
> recieve more from RIPE.

We'd love to, truly, but I do not see how we can without having an
abundance of available addresses to hand out. The math just doesn't work
out.

There are currently 1849 LIRs that you want us to take care of, i.e.,
they are holding only a single /22. Considering that almost all of these
joined in the last 18 months, I think it is quite safe to assume that
the number will be 2500 or more by the time your proposal would be
implemented by the NCC, even if it were to pass the PDP in record speed.

You have suggested that you do want the proposed new "reserved pool" to
have a max allocation size, but have so far not said what it should be.
So, for the sake of the argument, I'll make up some possible max
allocation sizes below.

Also for the sake of the argument I'll make the assumption that the
reserved pool is activated when it contains a /10, both because that's a
figure you've mentioned earlier, and also because waiting until it
contains a /9 will in all likelihood mean it will sit there inactive for
years, and that won't help anyone either.

First, let's try with a max allocation size of /22. Then there would be
4096 /22s in the pool, enough for all of the LIRs you want us to take
care of. But, as I understand you've already noticed, a /22 doesn't last
very long at all if you plan to hand out a "whole" address per
subscriber (or more). Neither does a /21. So this doesn't really help
much; /22 or /21, both are "not enough" - the change would not be worth
the trouble.

Also, if you consider the current LIR sign-up rate and assume that most
of them will want all the IPv4 they can get their hands on while they
still can, the entire pool would probably not lat a full year before
being completely drained. Another reason why it wouldn't be worth the
trouble.

So, let's try with a max allocation size of /21 then. The /10 reserved
pool would have 2048 /21s. But that is fewer /21s than the number of
LIRs that would be eligible for receiving allocations from it. Oops. So
with /21 (or greater obviously), we simply do not have enough addresses
to take care of all the LIRs you want us to - and helping only a
(randomly selected?) subset of them is much worse than helping none,
IMHO, as it would create arbitrary inequalities and unfairness.

Finally, in any case it would mean that we decide to burn through our
remaining resources at the expense of the "future generations" to which
those resources are currently earmarked. I do not think that would be
wise at all. A proverb we have here in Norway about peeing one's pants
in winter to warm up comes to mind... We should try to keep a /22 in
reserve for those who decide to enter the business a decade from now
too, and by the look of things, we might just succeed in that - IFF we
don't fall for the temptation to pass policies such as the one you're
proposing.

Tore