[address-policy-wg] IPv4 waiting list policy

Gert Doering wrote on 09/12/2021 07:56:
> So, if you were to decide, what would you do?

the ipv4 address market is now the largest global supplier of ipv4 
addresses. To put some figures on it, 11433920 addresses were 
transferred via the ripe ncc in 2021 so far 
(ripencc-transfers_latest.json), and 9696896 in 2020.

alloclist.txt shows 2981 /24 allocations so far in 2021, i.e. 763136 
addresses, and 1166 /24 allocations in 2020, i.e. 298496 addresses

I.e. the RIPE NCC allocated only 6.25% of the total address space which 
changed hands in the ripe region in 2021, and ~3% in 2020.

In a market situation like this, there are two ways of making an impact: 
1. by being a large enough market player that decisions you make will 
make a significant difference to the ecosystem and 2. by changing the 
rules - which RIPE / the RIPE NCC has some ability to do.

The RIPE NCC has historically been reluctant to interfere with past 
assignments, and it's unlikely that this will change. It doesn't have 
the market power to change the market substantially, and any rule change 
it makes will only affect new allocations.

In other words, a policy change from APWG, if implemented by the RIPE 
NCC, would only potentially affect a tiny percentage of address 
holdership changes, and would be unlikely to make much of a difference 
in the overall scheme of things.

In addition to this, Marco's email mentioned:

> In the last 24 months, we provided 4,178 LIRs with a /24 allocation:
> -    2,019 allocations (48%) went to members with a single LIR account

Allocations to members with a single LIR account are unlikely to be 
wholesale abusers.  Some of the LIRs with multiple accounts and /24s 
look like genuine ip address users (e.g. telcos / vpn hosting outfits / 
etc).

But a number of them look unusual, e.g. where the first entry on a web 
search for their company name is their RIPE LIR ID.

> So, if you were to decide, what would you do?

So, that.  If I were supreme ruler of the universe, I'd get more 
information about these peculiar-looking allocations, then make a 
decision about whether it was worth either changing policy or 
operational practice to block or restrict allocations of this form, then 
model some potential options in terms of risk / outcome, and then after 
thinking about it for a while, I might make a decision to change policy, 
or executive practice, or not, depending on the overall likely outcome. 
Right now we don't have enough data to work with.

Also, unless a fix actually fixes something, it's just busywork.

Sander was right though: we're talking about rearranging the deck chairs 
on the Titanic, and any discussion needs to be framed in this context.

Nick