[address-policy-wg] 2014-03 two cents on multi homing ASN requirement

On 16/08/2014 13:58, Gert Doering wrote:
> Uh.  I find it slightly hard to judge whether this was sarcastic or
> whether you are actually indeed supporting the proposal...?

you can probably tell I was joking.

I don't support proposals when there are no basic mechanisms in place to
stop people from abusing them.

Previously, this could have been enforced by the €50 fee per annum for each
ASN, but this fee disappeared in the 2013 RIPE NCC charging scheme on
recommendation from the RIPE NCC Charging Scheme Task Force:

> http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/gm/april-2012/supporting-documents/report-of-the-charging-scheme-task-force
> http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/gm/april-2012/presentations/report-of-the-charging-scheme-task-force/view

The task force reported this:

"The task force thought that charging for ASNs was unnecessary. Members who
have ASNs also have address space so they will still be charged."

The Task Force did not take into account that charging for resources also
acts as a simple but effective abuse-dampening mechanism, which was one of
the original reasons that charging for PI resources went into the
contractual requirements policy (the other main reason was that charging
for resources acts as a simple garbage collection mechanism, which we have
also lost).  I had planned to object to this at the 2012 RIPE NCC GM but
unfortunately wasn't able to attend the meeting.

If this policy is passed as-is, then anyone will be able to abuse the
policy to request an arbitrary number of ASNs for any reason, and the RIPE
NCC will not be able to refuse the request.  This is a particular problem
given that we have a shortage of ASN16s and a feature disparity between
ASN16s and ASN32s.

I have no major problem problem handing out ASNs on request but if we do,
there needs to be a damper mechanism in place to stop abuse.

To do this, either APWG should put in place a policy for the RIPE NCC to
evaluate ASN requests and assign according to need, or else it should
charge for ASN assignments.

I strongly favour the latter, as it is simpler and less ambiguous.  It also
restores the garbage collection mechanism which we previously had and have
now lost.

Nick