[address-policy-wg] 2022-02 New Policy Proposal (Remove mandatory IPv4 PA assignment registration in the RIPE Database)

Hi,

>> To break it down by rationale:
>> 
>> "One of the main reasons for registering IPv4 PA assignments was that LIRs could show their use of IPv4 and thus justify the request for an additional IPv4 allocation from the RIPE NCC. However, this requirement has become obsolete since the RIPE NCC ran out of IPv4 addresses in 2019."
> 
> This merely means that this particular reason is no longer relevant for IPv4 addresses.

Justifying getting more PA Allocations was never the reason to document PA Assignments in the RIPE database. Its purpose is to document who to contact for administrative and technical issues concerning the IP addresses. Being able to use that data to verify that IP addresses are actually in use before allocating more was just a useful side effect.

I therefore oppose this rationale. I know that organisations are lazy and only properly document assignments when they want the benefits for themselves (i.e. getting another allocation). I think there is a more important decision to make here: do we still want this level of documentation for operational purposes?

If we don’t want/need this level of documentation anymore then sure, remove the mandatory PA assignment registration in the RIPE DB. But in that case rewrite the proposal to make that very explicit. Removing the requirement using the wrong arguments is misleading. Call it what it is.

Cheers,
Sander