[address-policy-wg] 2014-05 New Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (Policy for Inter-RIR Transfers of Internet Resources)

* Tore Anderson

> I'm perplexed that the APNIC staff is uncertain whether or not 2014-05
> is compatible with their policy. The way I read them, they unequivocally
> are.

I was pointed this recording of APNIC's policy-sig meeting which sheds
some more light on the matter (the relevant presentation starts at
1:33): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cXk8BrMJJU

It would appear there are two distinct problems:

1) APNIC feels that 2014-05 causes a circular policy loop for
APNIC->RIPE transfers, cf. the slide that's up at 1:36:30. As I
understand it, the problem is that APNIC's policy says any requirements
on the receiver is «as defined in [RIPE's] tranfer policy», which in
turn says the «the RIPE NCC will work with the resource holder to
fulfil[sic] any requirements of [APNIC]».

I personally believe this is a misinterpretation on APNIC's part, as my
understanding on the latter language is that it is only to be applied
when the sending RIR insists on particular requirements being imposed on
the receiver, that which are not found in our own set of policies. The
most obvious example of such a requirement would be ARIN's insistence on
«reciprocal, compatible, needs-based policies» (cf.
https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#eight4).

For APNIC, on the other hand, there does not appear to be any policy
requirement that would require this language to come into effect. (They
could still use it for non-policy requirements though, such as demanding
a transfer fee from the RIPE region recipient, but I digress.)
Therefore, the receiver of a transfer from APNIC to RIPE would only be
subject to any requirements in our own policies (i.e., ripe-623 section
5.5 or 6.4).

In any case, 2014-05 probably needs to be amended so that it is clear
that the statements «when Internet number resources are transferred from
another RIR, the RIPE NCC will work with the resource holder to fulfil
any requirements of the sending RIR» and «the RIPE NCC will also comply
with the commitments imposed by the receiving RIR, in order to
facilitate the transfer», is only to be used if and only if there other
RIR has an absolute requirement that does not exist in our policies, and
furthermore that they are used to allow compliance with that particular
requirement alone.

2) Assuming the previous point is handled, there is an additional
concern that if 2014-05 passes, it will cause ARIN to declare that
APNIC's policy is no longer compatible. It wasn't entirely clear to me
if they though this would happen instantaneously (by ARIN-the-RIR, not
the community), or if they were worried that the ARIN community would
react by changing their policies to make them incompatible.

- The instantaneous alternative does strike me as somewhat far fetched,
considering that ARIN has already deemed APNIC's policy to be
«reciprocal, compatible, needs-based», and the fact that 2014-05 doesn't
change a single word in neither ARIN's nor APNIC's policy documents.
That said, obviously I can't know for certain if 2014-04 could possibly
cause such an instantaneous change in how ARIN interprets APNIC's policy
text. Maybe John could chime in?

- The other alternative, where 2014-05's passing would prompt the ARIN
community to change their policy document so that APNIC<->ARIN transfers
are no longer possible, does seems more plausible, yet somewhat
speculative as we have no idea whether the ARIN community cares about
2014-05 at all and if so what they think about it.

Another possibility, which was suggested by one commentator, is that the
APNIC community preempts such an ARIN policy change, by changing their
own policy instead (if they feel it is necessary in order to keep the
ARIN community happy that is).

In any case, as other RIRs' policies are out of our hands, I don't think
we can do much about it in 2014-05, unless there is some clear guidance
from APNIC and/or ARIN on how 2014-05 could be amended to make them
happy (assuming either of them are unhappy in the first place). While
I'm a firm believer in letting the individual RIR communities write
their own policies without other regions trying to influence the
process, Inter-RIR policies are necessarily exceptions.

Tore