[address-policy-wg] 2015-01 Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (Alignment of Transfer Requirements for IPv4 Allocations)

Hi Ciprian,

* Ciprian Nica

> What should be pointed out is the effects of the policy and if the
> community will benefit from it or some small group of people.
> 
> To summarize the effects will be :
>  - higher membership fees

Nope. The RIPE NCC membership is steadily growing[1], and as a result the
membership fee has steadily been decreasing[2].

[1] https://labs.ripe.net/statistics/number-of-lirs
[2] https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-620

The main reason for this growth is *actual network operators* joining
in order to make use of the «last /8 policy». Even if we managed to
stop *all* the "create LIR; transfer /22; close LIR" abuse, that would
not reverse this trend.

Also, keep in mind that these "create; transfer; close" LIRs will pay
the NCC as little as they can get away with. As I understand it, that
means the sign-up fee and one yearly membership fee. If the goal is to
increase the NCC's revenue and lower the membership fees, it is much
better long-term strategy to deny these "create; transfer; close" LIRs
and instead keep the /22s in reserve for future LIRs belonging to
*actual network operators*. Why? Because these will actually *keep
paying their membership fees* instead of closing down as soon as
possible.

> What is the expected positive effect ? To preserve the last /8 pool ?
> The one that increased to 18.1 million IPs ?

The by far biggest contributor to the RIPE NCC's «last /8» pool has
been the IANA IPv4 Recovered Address Space pool[4].

[4] https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-recovered-address-space/ipv4-recovered-address-space.xhtml

This pool contained quite a bit of space when it was first activate,
and the RIPE NCC has to date received 3,670,016 IPv4 addresses from it
(/11+/12+/13). It is important to note, though, that the IANA pool *is
not replenishing*. It has been almost three years ago since any
significant amounts of space was added to it (back in 2012-08).

So we cannot expect that allocations from the IANA pool will continue
to match the rate of /22 allocations from the RIPE NCC's «last /8» pool
in the future. Therefore I have every expectation that we'll start
seeing «last /8» pool actually start to drain soon.

For what it's worth, since the first «last /8» allocation was made 995
days ago (cake in five days!), a total of 6,657,280 IPv4 addresses has
been delegated by the NCC. Our share of the remaining IANA pool is on
the other hand only 425,625 addresses.

So all in all, I think that preserving the last /8 pool is indeed a
valuable goal. If possible I'd like to see it last for another ten
years - but given today's burn rate, the current 18.1M addresses plus
whatever's coming from IANA will not suffice.

Tore