[address-policy-wg] 2023-04 Review Phase (Add AGGREGATED-BY-LIR status for IPv4 PA assignments)

Hi everyone,

I mentioned this during the WG session but want to bring it up on the
mailing list, what is the definition of assignment-size.

In the IPv6 implementation of AGGREGATED-BY-LIR there is an
assignment-size attribute, which is proposed to be optional for the IPv4
version.

>From the inet6num documentation:
 "assignment-size:" - This specifies the common size of all
 individual assignments aggregated into one block with the status
 'AGGREGATED-BY-LIR'. This attribute is required to be present if the
 inet6num object has this status. The individual assignments do not need
 to be represented in the RIPE Database. But one or more assignments may
 be included if the member wishes to specify them for any reason.

While there is no definition of what "size" means, my understanding is
that the technical implementation follows the implemention requirements
of inet6num objects, which is the CIDR size.

However, in IPv4 it is allowed to do CIDR _or_ an arbitrary range of
addresses.  So if one were to create this inetnum object:

  inetnum: 192.0.2.0 - 192.0.2.255
  netname: customers of example
  status: AGGREGATED-BY-LIR
  assignment-size: 32
  ...

Here the assignment size is ambiguous.  Is it 32 addresses aka a /27, or
is it a /32 aka 1 address.

I propose that we define this to be a CIDR assignment and they put in
the number of bits of the netmask, so the above example would be
assignment-size of /32.

-peter