a Proposal to replacing RIPE 185

Dear Working Group.
Last year we set up the 17th of May task force to help the RIPE NCC identify
potential improvements to the handeling of requests sent to
hostmaster at ripe.net. May of theese have been implemented with success. The
continuing growth of the number of LIRs does however call for other
meassures to be taken.

One of the suggestions by the task force and by the RIPE NCC hostmasters was
to improve the IP address request form. A fruther analysis of the
underlying problems seems to indicate that the shortcomings of the form is
merely a symptom. There are clear indications that the whole policy and
procedure document, RIPE 185, would benefit from an overhaul.

After studying this document which was created when CIRD was still
young and unknow to large parts of our community, we have found that it
cotains a lot of usefull information, which is strictly speaking not
Policies or Procedures. Rewriten in a clearer and more concise way we may
archive a much better common understanding between the individual LIRs and
the RIPE NCCC hostmasters.

Our hypothesis is therefore that by creating a new strucure for documenting
policy and procedures with better examples, and work on clearifying the
language in the policy statements the work load of the RIPE NCC hostmasters
may be reduced drasticaly. This is due to the fact that for a large
propotion of the requests handeled by the RNH's there is lacking information
the NRH's. By making it clear to the LIRs that it is the LIRs responsibility
to request from the customer and make sure all relevant information is in
the application before it is submittet to the RNH, we belive the total time
spent, both by RNH's, and by LIR staff will be significantly reduced.

We have therefor proposed the following structure for a replacement of RIPE
185: "Addressing Policies and Procedures for the RIPE NCC service region"

(Abstract, Introduction, Scope)
Internet Address Space and the Internet Registry System
Policy framework
Policies
Glossary
References
Appendices (bitboundary chart, examples etc)

Remove the following sections:
All instructions on how to fill out an IP or ASN request form
   (in separate "supporting notes" ripe docs)
PA vs PI
   (Is described in ripe-127)
RIPE NCC RS (mailboxes, ticketing system, robot etc)
   (Instructions on website)
Inaddr procedures (policy to be left in)
   (separate ripe doc will be created)
Routing considerations

Our proposal is that the RIPE NCC will present a first draft by doing
the ground work on the document, re-writing some sections
in a more clear and concise manner. This will then be presented to the
lir-wg and the editorial committe for comments and input.

We also belive that there is a strong need to publish all policy changes  as
RIPE document. If there is a need to reduce the administrative overhead of
changing the procedures and policies document for every policy document, the
changes and amenedments could be made in a single (not more than one at a
time !) "Amendments to Policies and procedures.

I have spent some days with Nurani and Sabrina at the RIPE NCC and discussed
various ways to do this, and our proposal is to form a RIPE-185bis editorial
team to facilitate discussion on the lir-wg mailing list and working group
meetings and summarise the community consensus.

-----
Hans Petter Holen,  http://hph.home.online.no
Phone: +47 40 20 39 16, Stalsberggt 28 B, 2010 Strømmen, Norway