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

> On 4 Oct 2022, at 15:25, denis walker <ripedenis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Colleagues
> 
> I have many things to say about this proposal but I will start with a
> response to Sander's concern.
> 
> On Tue, 4 Oct 2022 at 13:53, Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl> wrote:
>> 
>> 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?
> 
> Again we are back to asking the question, "What is the purpose of the
> RIPE Database in 2022?”

My guess is that the fact the initial query protocol was called WHOIS and not WHATIS or even WHEREIS might be a good hint.

Joao