[address-policy-wg] 2019-02 New Policy Proposal (Reducing IPv4 Allocations to a /24)

After reading and thinking I arrive at the following principles:

a) It is not tenable for the RIPE NCC to stop allocating IPv4 addresses
as long as it has blocks that are useful to route packets.

Note: As an individual I would very much like to just stop with this
silliness. However I do not think this is tenable for us as a community.

b) Once the pool decreases below that threshold the RIPE NCC has to
maintain a waiting list in order to establish a sequence in case space
becomes availble. Reason: see (a)

c) It is not tenable for the RIPE NCC to require the first LIR on the
waiting list to wait for more address space than a minimal usfeful block
to accumulate.

d) The length of the waiting list and other practicalities should be
secondary considerations after these principles above. For instance, the
RIPE NCC can always recover the costs incurred by the process from those
using it.


The policy captures these principles.  The policy can be improved in a
number of ways. Here are some considerations for the proposers in case
they would wish to revise it:

1) Motivate the choice for /24 in terms of being the smallest block
useful to route packets considering current routing practice.

2) Explicitly mention the non-goals of the policy as discussed.

3) Keep in mind our good experience with using concrete dates for policy
changes. Consider to make the change on a specific date. This is more
predictable than an event sometime in the future. "Run Out Fairly"
worked pretty well. Specifically why not just say "This polixy into
effect on September 1st 2019"?

4) The policy could be made more adaptable to future scenarios. This
would prevent more ad-hoc policy changes which are a pain and do not
look very professional to the world outside RIPE. Maybe the policy could
be 'parameterised' so that the community can decide to change parameters
rather than re-write the policy text.

4a) Consider the possibility that future routing practice may change the
longest useful routing prefix away from a /24 as Randy alluded to. This
should be a parameter.

4b) Consider the possibility, however unlikely, that the RIPE NCC
receives a significant amount of address space to re-distribute. Would
this policy still be supported by the community in this event? Should
the allocation size be a parameter that can increase above the <smallest
usable prefix> either by community choice or automatically if a certain
pool size is exceeded?

4c) What happens down the road when IPv4 really becomes legacy? Can we
make the policy applicable even then? Would (4) and (5) above do the trick?

5) Maybe mention explicitly that one has to be a LIR in good standing to
be on the waiting list.

Daniel