[ncc-services-wg] Policy proposal for services to legacy Internet resource holders

[This is said on personal title of someone involved with Internet Number Registration for quite some time.]

Can we take a step back agree on definitions and community goals before we continue this discussion?

In my book the community goals for IPv4 address space registration are a correct, current and comprehensive registry of who hold/uses the address space. Rob Blokzijl has written this up nicely in ripe-495 with a little help from yours truly.  Now that the times of distributing from the unallocated pool of iPv4 addresses are coming to an end, it becomes even more important to maintain such a registry and to make it attractive for address space holders/users to maintain it.  Should we fail to maintain such a registry, the consequences range from making it more difficult to track down criminals via hampering operational coordination to balkanisation of the IPv4 Internet. I am sure that participants on this list understand that a bad registry is harmful to them and the community at large. ripe-495 proposes principles for registration policies. Go read it. It is only three pages long and starts from scratch.

Philosophically there are multiple ways to legitimise a registry of IP number resources: one may argue that registration authority passes down from the IANA or one can argue that the authority is derived bottom-up from the participants in inter-domain routing or one can argue that it is the RIPE community with its open, transparent and accessible processes that legitimises the RIPE NCC registry. Personally I consider a mixture of these factors to define the de-facto legitimacy of the RIR registries.

In practice there is consensus that RIR policies govern registration of the address space that has been distributed via the RIRs.  This also includes that changes to RIR policies apply to all such address space. The policies are maintained in an open, transparent and accessible way. The policies are implemented by the RIRs in a professional and neutral way. This is governed by formal agreements between the LIRS/PI holders and the RIR and then transitively down from the LIRs. All this provides security and stability to address space holders/users as well as a correct, current and comprehensive registry to everyone.

Then there is "legacy" address space from before the establishment of the RIRs and their policy processes. The registration goals also apply to this address space. However there are no formal agreements and no formal policies. Registrations for much of this address space are also less correct, current and comprehensive than non-legacy registrations. I do not at all critisise those responsible at the time! Quite the opposite. They were providing a community service with little means and in-lieu of doing more exiting things. A small fraction of the IPv4 address space is their "legacy". Please do not confuse legacy space with ERX space. See the post-scriptum for an explanation of ERX space.

In order to keep the IPv4 registry comprehensive, current and correct, the RIRs have always encouraged legacy address holder/users to register their address space. The RIRs are also cooperating to reach these goals for legacy address space, see the post-scriptum for an example.  The RIPE community has carefully avoided to make legacy address space subject to address space *distribution* policies, such as utilisation criteria. However *registration* policies have been applied to any registrations made as far as the technical operation of the registry is concerned. The community regards good registration to be more important than recovering some address space that might be under-used according to current policies.

	So what we have to decide as a community is: under which policies does the RIPE community allow legacy space holders to register 	their address space in the RIPE Internet Number registry. Nothing more, nothing less. 

All other questions are secondary. Resolving conflicts about the holdership/use of the address space is a non issue. Past agreements about allocation of address space are a non issue. Future agreements about transfers are a non-issue. If there is a conflict about who holds/uses address space, then we need to decide what to do in terms of registration. We can decide to help resolving conflictes, but that is another matter.  In my opinion looking for past agreements concerning legacy address space between registrants and IANA or "INTERNIC", "SRI-NIC" or Santa Claus is a waste of time.  We have to decide what we register.

ripe-495 gives guidance about registration policies, also for legacy space. Let us work with that guidance in mind to define under which conditions registrations for legacy address space should be made and maintained in the RIPE Internet Number registry.  Let us not waste time with arguments that are not helpful to make that decision.

Daniel



PS:
Early this century the RIRs, on request of their communities, set up an activity to make registration of legacy address space more correct, current and comprehensive. It was called ERX (Early Registration Transfers). Its stated goal was to move existing registrations of legacy address space to a RIR that was close to the user and verify those registrations at the same time. Goal: correct any errors, get current information registered, make the registries more comprehensive and make it easier to maintain the registrations:
	
	"This will enable resource holders to maintain all their records 
	in one database and End Users to interface with just one RIR for 
	all database and reverse delegation matters. This effort will also 
	help to locate address holders and recover unused or underutilised 
	address space."

It was explicitly not a goal of ERX to bring the legacy space under the RIR policies in any other respect than those governing the technical operation of the registry. It was stated however that ERX registration holders might be asked to share the operational costs of the registry should the community decide that at a future time. All this has been communicated and discussed by the community at the time. In practice most legacy space was registered with ARIN since ARIN had inherited the registration database from the legacy days and most of those were in use in the ARIN region. So ERX moved registrations from ARIN to other RIRs, mostly to the RIPE NCC. The address space covered by ERX registration transfers is called ERX space. It is only part of the total legacy space.  ERX space is the part of legacy space for which registrations have been transferred between RIRs as part of ERX.