[address-policy-wg] 2015-01 New Policy Proposal (Alignment ofTransfer Requirements for IPv4 Allocations)

Hi Saeed,

> Thank you Sander for the info.
> I looked into it. Indeed it was a long discussion.
> 
> Only one point:
> As you can see, at the time of suggestion of that proposal, there were NO opposing arguments ( according to available data at that time. )

There were. There were people who reasoned that if someone could transfer addresses they could also just give them back. On the other hand freeing up a contiguous block of addresses will probably take effort (renumbering) so allowing people to sell them would create an incentive to do that and make those addresses usable by someone else.

At the time reclaiming addresses want seen as a viable solution. If that isn't possible then allowing transfers was seen as the next option so that at least unused addresses would be freed up and transferred/sold to someone who would actually use them.

> Now there are new data, specially some experiments with re-allocation of address spaces through selling/buying them.

That was foreseen and intended :)

> Is it possible to re-activate, or re-consider previously approved policies?

Of course. Policies are never static. The whole purpose of this working group is to improve policies and align them with today's requirements.

> Because of this policy for re-allocating address spaces through selling/buying, now we see a very HOT bazar and
> many are making money with it, while none of us ( I mean LIRs ) have paid for any particular address spaces to RIPE NCC. This is easily driving people to lie ( make a new LIR, get some IPs, sell it .... and again and again )

A new LIR can only get a /22 from RIPE NCC so while this is indeed possible the impact of that is limited. Whether this opening up new LIRs just to sell the /22 is something that needs to be prevented/discouraged (the policy proposal under discussion) or whether this is a good thing (see Martin Millnert's messages) is for this working group to discuss.

Cheers,
Sander