[ncc-services-wg] comments on proposal 2012-07

Hi Nick,

> Section 2.6 still provides carte blanche for legacy resource holders to
> freeload services off the RIPE NCC with no consequences.

Not really. It maintains the current situation. We cannot force a legacy resource holder to sign a contract. In that case all services could be withdrawn, but that would not be in the best interest of the community. Keeping the database up to date is in everybody's best interest. The other service that a legacy resource holder already might have is reverse DNS. Withdrawing that would be a bit silly as it is already in place and doesn't cost any significant amount. And the RIPE NCC "will have no obligation to begin to provide any registry service element not already provided in support of a particular Legacy Internet Resource", so everything else is not part of 2.6. If a legacy resource holder wants anything more they will have to choose one of the other options.

> As a RIPE NCC
> member, I am not at all happy about this.  The amount of work that the RIPE
> NCC is going to have to undertake to handle the legacy resource holder
> community is very large indeed, and it is not reasonable to expect the RIPE
> membership to foot the bill for those legacy resource holders who aren't
> members and who feel un-inclined to contribute towards registration
> services just because they couldn't be bothered to pay.

I hope I have shown above that there is not much of a bill for this, and the little bill there might be is in the best interest of the community.

> Section 2.5: I see where this is coming from, namely there will probably be
> situations where the users of the address space will be unable to identify
> themselves adequately as having any claim to their assignment.  However,
> this section is open to abuse and it concerns me that it's still there.  I
> concede that there is a requirement to have some type of arrangement like
> this, but the wording of the current section needs to be tightened up
> considerably.

It only applies to "specific enduring or temporary circumstances which are recognized by the RIPE NCC as being outside the resource holder's control". Any attempt to use this section must be recognised/approved by the NCC. How is this open to abuse if it only applies to circumstances outside the resource holder's control?

> Less serious issues:
> 
> Section 2.4 is redundant.  We have a well established precedent under the
> terms of 2007-01 for engaging with sponsoring LIRs and this seems to work
> well in practice.  Creating this policy option merely adds cost to the RIPE
> NCC's bottom line for no gain.

This option actually comes from 2007-01, which created RIPE-452: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-452.

RIPE-452 states: "End Users of provider independent resources are responsible for maintaining a contractual link to the RIPE NCC either through a sponsoring LIR or else directly to the RIPE NCC for the purposes of managing these resources.". So to be consistent with 2007-01 this option has to be present.

Cheers,
Sander