[address-policy-wg] 2014-12 Last Call for Comments (Allow IPv6 Transfers)

On 12/02/2015 20:38, Erik Bais wrote:
> It is clear that we are talking about IPv6 PI space here.. that the contract
> needs to be in place, that we talk about a re-assignment (read - PI space
> assignment..) and that the minimum assignment size needs to be matched.  
> It is clear that it is not about an allocation (IPv6 PA space) or do I miss
> something here which is a detail that a native speaker would see and I'm
> missing .. ?? 

the issue that concerns me is that creating a requirement for a contract
means that there is a requirement for legal people to be involved in the
transfer process.  Whatever about legal wording in civil law countries (NL,
most of europe), common law countries (ie/uk/us, etc) generally tend to
benefit from more specific wording.  If there is any hint of ambiguity, it
creates the possibility of argument and that is painful when it happens.

The term "minimum assignment size" is used sloppily all over the place in
the ripe policy document store to mean different things in different
places.  In this case, the wording isn't particularly ambiguous to you or
me, but it would not necessarily be clear at first sight to the man on the
Clapham omnibus. If five uncontentious words were added, this would make
its interpretation completely clear.

Weighing things up, common sense suggests that it would be more sensible to
clarify than not.

Previous policy proposals have had clarification text added between phases,
so it's possible that adding the text wouldn't necessarily delay the
proposal - obviously this is a decision for the ap-wg chairs.

> It is my expectation that the majority of the v6 PI transfers will be on
> complete prefix transfers and not partials or splits... Specifically
> companies merging together, reorganizing. 
> 
> Having said that .. that also explains the not having the 24 month
> 'hoarding' cool down period... 

my concern with the 24 month cooling off period related to what's going to
happen in the future when someone decides to create a unified resource
transfer policy.  The fewer differences between resource transfer policies,
the simpler the policy.   But yeah, I agree in this case that it's not
necessary.

As a more general observation, it might be useful for a future unified
policy to differentiate between depleted resources (e.g. ipv4 / asn16) and
non depleted resources (e.g. ipv6 /asn32) and make it clear that the
cooling off period is intended depleted resources.

Nick