[address-policy-wg] 2014-03 New Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (Remove Multihoming Requirement for AS Number Assignments)

On 24/12/2014 18:14, Gert Doering wrote:
> So do I take that as support of the policy, or opposition?  And if the
> latter, what are you unhappy about which couldn't be brought up in the 
> previous round already (since this new version really tries to incorporate 
> all feedback that has been given)?

It's the evening of dec 24 so I'm not going to go into a whole rigmarole
about the theory of bureaucratic policy.  But as a general rule, most ripe
community addressing policy over the last couple of years has been veering
towards relaxation and simplification of rules rather than making them more
complicated.  This is particularly the case with ipv4, and almost the same
with ipv6 from most practical viewpoints.  As a community, we're pretty
much together that this is a good thing.

Then this proposal happens.

It invents a magic number - one thousand. Yes, I'm aware of the distant
practical basis for this, but let's not pretend that in every other respect
the number isn't pulled straight out of the air because it happens to be an
ordinal power of the number of fingers on most peoples' hands.  Magical,
nay divine, power is assigned to this number: thus far shalt thou abuse and
no further!

It creates a policy requirement to invoke RPSL, possibly one of the most
inscrutably ill-defined languages ever devised, but the requirement is so
poorly defined that anything could be credibly hurled into the database.
E.g. "from AS23456 import AS-NULL".

It creates a requirement to state a need for the ASN which the RIPE NCC
will forbidden from evaluating.

It also creates a requirement for the RIPE NCC to police this need.  Not
evaluate, mind you - just police it without evaluation.  I'm trying to
understand how this could possibly work, so in the unlikely event that
there are no further emails from this address, you can assume that my brain
has imploded due to a neural singularity.

It conveniently ignores the awkward reality that in the event that an
organisation might ever want 1001 ASNs, they could spend 10 euros
registering a second company and continuing on their merry way.  Guys and
gals, I have shocking news for you: if someone is dishonest enough to abuse
the rules using one organisation, they can just as easily abuse the rules
with two different organisations and perpetrate twice as much abuse.
Application of iteration theory indicates that this abuse may even scale
linearly.

The sensible approach to this is to relax the policy requirements for asn
assignment - in exactly the same way that the ripe community has relaxed
the policy requirements for other number resources - and then apply a small
fee to help prevent egregious abuse.  Note: not stop, because it is not
possible to completely people abusing arbitrary rulesets without harming
the common good.

This is far simpler, most manageable, smaller, more internally consistent
and generally more beneficial for the community than proposing byzantine
policy.

Look I'm sorry, but this policy draft is absurd and flies in the face of
reality, common sense and practical application.  Please kill it with fire.

Nick