[address-policy-wg] 2015-05 New Policy Proposal (Revision of Last /8 Allocation Criteria)

On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 5:49 PM Elvis Daniel Velea <elvis at velea.eu> wrote:

> Hi Remco,
>
> On 10/20/15 5:27 PM, Remco van Mook wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > (no hats)
> >
> > I think this is a very bad idea*. The whole reason the final /8 policy
> looks the way it does (and is as far as I can see working *exactly* as
> intended) is so late entrants to this Internet game have a fair chance of
> establishing themselves without having to resort to commercial alternatives
> for IPv4 address space.
> We started this discussion at least one year ago. We had a few
> presentations at RIPE Meetings and there were a few discussions on this
> topic on the mailing list. It was obvious that many of the new members
> registered after 2012 need more than the default /22.


Doesn't everyone? There's a reason the minimum allocation size pre-runout
was never smaller than a /21. As said, the purpose of final /8 is *not* to
keep doing business as usual - those days are over and are never to return.
Adding additional discontiguous prefixes form the final /8 pool to existing
LIRs, aside from being bad engineering, does not provide a scalable
solution; at the end of the race you now have two separate /22s and as you
managed to run out of the first one, you'll run out of the second one as
well.  At the same time it's one less company that is able to get their own
onramp to the IPv4 internet.


> Additionally, there are a couple other RIRs (APNIC, LACNIC) that have a
> similar policy and it seems to be working just fine.
> > For established LIRs, adding a trickle of additional address space
> probably won’t make a jot of a difference for their business and is likely
> not going to optimise the utilisation of those final scraps. The final /22
> is *intended* to be used as a migration tool to IPv6, and is a crucial tool
> at that. I consider it a Very Good Thing Indeed that this region had the
> foresight that IPv6 won’t happen overnight once IPv4 runs out** and as long
> as we’re still talking about IPv6 adoption and not IPv4 deprecation, that
> tool should be available for as many organisations as possible.
> Well, a /22 every 18 months may be helpful to those that need to work
> with only 1024 IPs.. That was the signal I received over the past months.
>

A /22 every 18 months will give 'newish' LIRs (but not the 'newest') a
single extra /22. Come round 2, there will be none to be had. To me, this
looks like an extra final cigarette when you resolved to stop smoking. The
policy text was and is unambiguous, you knew you were only getting the one
allocation, there should be no surprises there. Stop smoking already.


> >
> > Finally, introducing this kind of change in policy at this point in time
> could well be argued as being anti-competitive and would end us up in a
> legal mess.
> Can you please detail how it would be argued as being anti-competitive?
> This would apply to *all* members and each member would have access to
> it, provided they have not yet transferred (parts of) the allocations
> already received.
>

It's anti-competitive to the people who are looking to sign up in 2018 or
so. There's another word for companies that keep new entrants out, but I'm
pretty desperate to keep that word out of this discussion. Legislation
takes a dim view.


> I hope you understand what we want to achieve. Give a chance to those
> that have registered as LIR after Sept. 2012 to receive a *bit* more
> space from the central registry (as the prices for small allocations via
> the transfer market is really high).
> - would you agree with an other way to achieve this? If yes, please
> share your thoughts on how this proposal could be amended.
>

Well, sure, why not. I think it's a very bad idea for a whole pile of other
reasons, but if you were to draft a policy that would allow additional
NEEDS BASED allocations to existing LIRs from address space that gets
RETURNED to the RIPE NCC that is outside the final /8 pool (so basically,
allocated pre-2012), that would sound very reasonable, fair and good for
competition.

Best,

Remco
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