[address-policy-wg] Input Requested: How to Ensure Responsible ASN Resource Management

Dear colleagues,

At RIPE 86, we shared some observations regarding Autonomous System 
Number (ASN) requests and usage [1].

We see an increasing number of ASN requests coming from both inside and 
outside of our service region. This seems to be driven primarily by the 
low cost and ease of receiving an ASN from the RIPE NCC. The downside is 
that we also see a significant decrease in responsible resource 
management by these resource holders. A large number of ASNs are never 
used or become abandoned after a short period.

Some data: in the last two years, we have provided 4,186 ASNs (between 
March 2021 and February 2023). Of this amount, we can see that 1,478 
ASNs (more than 35%) do not appear to be in use, as they are not visible 
in the routing system.

Looking at total numbers, we have issued almost 38,000 ASNs, of which 
more than 8,000  (~20%) are not visible.

This growing trend not only creates avoidable work for Registration 
Services and added costs for the membership, we believe it also 
undermines the goal of responsible management of Internet number 
resources within our service region.

As the membership voted against an annual service fee for ASNs at the 
recent RIPE NCC General Meeting, I would like to ask the working group 
for guidance on how resource holders can be motivated to manage their 
ASNs responsibly and how the RIPE NCC can provide support for this.

We also plan to intensify our ongoing project to clean up unused 
Autonomous System (AS) Numbers [2]. Almost 2,000 unused ASNs have been 
recovered as part of this work so far. Do you support our approach here? 
And are there other ways we could improve the situation? Perhaps you 
could add clarification on requesting and returning ASNs in the relevant 
RIPE policy, or maybe we could give a stronger mandate and 
responsibility to the sponsoring LIRs.



If you have an ASN registered to you that you don’t need anymore, you 
can always contact us through the LIR Portal or via your sponsoring LIR 
and we will arrange for the return of this resource.

Kind regards,

Marco Schmidt
Manager Registration Services
RIPE NCC



[1] 
https://ripe86.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/82-RIPE86-Feeback-from-RS-reviewed.pdf

[2] https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/as-numbers/as-number-clean-up