[anti-abuse-wg] Allocation of number resources

Dear Ronald,

> (1)  What would have been the requirements, at that time (early 2011)
> that the provider would have had to meet in order to be allocated the
> /17 in question by RIPE NCC staff?  (In the ARIN region, for IPv4
> allocations there has been for some time various requirements in place
> that say that the provider being issued the address block must have
> some certain amount of hardware infrastructure in place in order to
> qualify for the allocation.  Does RIPE have any similar rules?  If
> so, then what are the rules, when did they go into effect, and what
> exactly does RIPE NCC staff do in order to actually enforce those
> rules, i.e. _prior_ to awarding an allocation to a given provider?)

The RIPE Community's policies generally do not contain highly specific requirements such as minimum amounts of hardware and direct the RIPE NCC to allocate address space to LIRs at the rate that the addresses are assigned and/or sub-allocated to end-users by that LIR.

In early 2011 a new LIR would receive as a first allocation the minimum allocation size, a /21, unless the LIR could demonstrate a need for a larger block. Such a need could be demonstrated in various ways, with proof of purchase of the right amount of hardware to deploy these addresses on being an obvious and often used one. Other ways to demonstrate a need include operating licenses granted by governments, contracts with providers, customers and/or partners and detailed deployment plans.

Subsequent allocations are evaluated in a large part on the usage rate of previous allocations. Should an LIR have requested a much larger size additional allocation than their previous usage rate would indicate, additional documentation of their need would be requested.

Today the RIPE NCC operates under the Last-/8 Policy, so we can only allocate a single /22 to each LIR, regardless of what size the LIR can justify.

> (2)  If there are indeed requirements along the lines above, then are
> those requirements only in effect during and at the time of the initial
> allocation?  Or is the provider who has been awarded an allocation either
> asked or required to maintain some certain amount of hardware infra-
> structure corresponding to the IPv4 address block allocation that it was
> awarded?

An allocation to an LIR is a block that is reserved for future use of that LIR, its size based on past usage rate and/or specified future plans. Most LIR's businesses, however, are dynamic: Customers come and go, projects change, get cancelled and new projects get started. The RIPE policies take this into account and there is no requirement to keep some arbitrary minimum amount of hardware infrastructure.

That said, when an LIR requests an additional allocation or when it is selected for a random audit, we verify the usage and validity of the existing assignments in the LIR's allocation(s).

> (3) If there are indeed ``maintenance'' requirements along the lines
> in (2) above, then has there ever been a single publically documented
> instance in which a provider's failure to maintain the minimum required
> hardware infrastructure dedicated to some given IP address block allocation
> has caused the RIPE NCC to actually revoke the address block allocation
> in question?


There are no 'maintenance' requirements as such in the RIPE NCC service region and these can therefore not be grounds for de-registering an allocation to an LIR.

I hope this answers your questions. If you have any others, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,

Alex Le Heux
Policy Implementation and Co-ordination
RIPE NCC