[address-policy-wg] agreement

* Radu-Adrian FEURDEAN

> - Second, right now the NCC is just handing out /22 to whoever can
> pay for them (with only a small extra administrative restriction
> during the last 6 months). For me this is plain "selling IP
> addresses" (concept that the NCC avoided like hell int the past), and
> it is also defeating the "keep space for later entrants" purpose. No
> need check (as in "do you really need that space" *), no requirement
> to deploy IPv6 of any kind, just a simple "pay to have it".

Time for a history lesson...

It has been true for a very long time, certainly for much longer than
the last /8 policy has been around, that new members (LIRs) have been
pretty much guaranteed to receive an minimum-sized IPv4 allocation.

The requester needed to be a member with assignments to make. That's
pretty much all there was to it. The logic: If a new LIR is about to
make >0 IPv4 assigments (sized >0 in total), then that LIR obviously
is in need of an IPv4 allocation sized >0, thus automatically
qualifying for a /n. (/n is the minimum allocation size at the time of
the request. Prior to the activation of the «last /8» policy it was
a /21, while today it is a /22.)

If you read ripe-649 closely you'll see that the above holds true
today: New LIRs with assignments to make get a minimum-sized IPv4
allocation.

So this part of the policy hasn't really changed. It might seem like
it, but in reality it is because two avenues that previously allowed
end users to obtain IPv4 space in a far easier way than "become an LIR"
is or ever was have been closed - thus making the "become an LIR" avenue
increase in popularity:

1) Receiving PA assignments from an LIR/ISP. Before IPv4 was running
out, there was no incentive for an LIR/ISP to not give an end user all
the space he needed; the LIR/ISP could easily cover such "loss" with
additional allocations from the NCC. That's no longer the case, so
LIR/ISPs that aren't completely out of free IPv4 space have every
reason to be very conservative about making PA assigments, e.g., by
reserving them for the highest-value customers.

2) Receiving PI assignments via a sponsoring LIR/ISP or directly from
the NCC. The «last /8» policy killed off IPv4 PI, except for IXP and
temporary use.

In summary: if one starts out by equating "accepting new paying members"
with "selling IP addresses", then the RIPE NCC has been seeling IP
addresses since its inception. It's not a new thing at all. (It's not
limited to IPv4 either, by the way: Any new member joining today gets
to pick up a "complimentary" IPv6 /29 welcome gift.)

What is new, though, is that we're essentially out of IPv4. This has
caused the community to sacrifice the previous convenient and cheap
avenues of obtaining voluminous IPv4 delegations for the sake of
conservation. Even though this obviously cannot stave off full and utter
depletion indefinitely, I believe it is the right thing to do for the
sake of new entrants joining the community in the years to come. I do
not support 2015-05 because to me it represents a reversal of this
course.

Tore