RIPE 38

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Minutes of the LIR Working Group session at RIPE 38.

Tuesday 23 January 2001.

Scribe: RIPE NCC Hostmaster - Geoff Charters, Roger Arcilla


Hans Petter Holen (HPH) opens the meeting by describing the way
policies are developed in this region. Policies are developed in open
forums (LIR-WG in the RIPE region). The Address Council (AC) oversees
the process and gives resommendations to the ICANN board. He asks the
audience to give input to the AC. He also stresses that the AC are elected
by
the regional policy foras like the lir-wg and that we are not there to make
policy ourselves, but merely to oversee the policy making in the regions.

(http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-38/presentations.html#LIR)5

HPH introduces the members of the AC: There are 3 members from the
APNIC region, 3 from the ARIN region, 3 from the RIPE region (see
http://www.aso.icann.org/ac/)

Sabine Jaumes term is ending. At the RIPE 38 plenary session
elections will take place.

HPH describes how the AC operates: The AC makes an effort not only
to attend open policy forums and other events in the recpetive region, but
also
to gather input trough special input foras.

The AC and the RIRs have recently sent out a call for nominations for
a vacant ICANN board seat. Nominations can be submitted by anyone.
There is also a possibility to express support for nominees.

In order to keep the geographic diversity on the ICANN board, the new
board member cannot come from Europe or the Asian Pacific region.

Address allocation policies are developed in a bottom-up manner in
each region. How is global policy developed? Is a proposal first
discussed in each region and then coordinatd between the RIRs? This
can be a long process. Do we need to create a gobal mechanism? Is
there more co-ordination necessary between the RIRs or the regional open
policy forums? What are global issues, what are regional?

HPH reports from the workshop the AC had with the RIRs and IANA in
Brisbane in November 2000. It was a very productive and effective
workshop. The role of the AC was discussed. Is the AC too active or
not active enough?

An action was placed on the RIR's to compare regional policies. The
goal is not to produce the same policies - but to find the differences.
There might reasons for different policies.

The general issue on how to take care of resource (IP addresses, ASNs).
Is it a public resource that need to be protected or should it be market
driven or auctioned?

The AC is committed to be more proactive in informing the community
about their acivities by creating a publically archived mailing list
which is used for AC meeting agendas, minutes and policy discussions.

Only about 5 people in the audience looked at the ASO web site. HPH
encourgaes everyone to follow the developments.

One achievement during last year was the discussion related to address
space needed for GPRS. This has been taken up in all regions and is
being handled in a consistent way. Up til now, address requirements
for the GPRS infrastructure has been discussed. Further discussions
need to take addresses for handsets into account.

Many of these developments address issues listed by the Ad hoc group.
The Ad hoc group will present its final report to ICANN shortly and
will then be closed.

The RIRs submitted a document to the AC and to ICANN listing criteria
to be used by ICANN when approving emerging RIR. According the ASO MoU
it is ICANN that makes the final decision about the approval of a new
RIR.

One important criteria is strong support from within the region of the
emerging RIR.

Similar to the RIPE LIR-WG there are open policy forums in the ARIN
and APNIC regions.

HPH wonders if this was a useful overview of AC activities and asks
for feedback. What should be on the AC's list of actions for 2001?

The audience feels this was useful.

Mark McFadden wants the AC to do more. In particular: there is a lot
of discussion about scarcity of IPv4 addresses and ASNs. A lot of work
is done in an uncoordinated way. Wants the AC to co-ordinate this.
Spreaded activities all over the world, wants the AC to combine this
work. He is not suggesting that they do the work themselves.
He also wants the AC be more active in globalising addressing policies.

He also feels that RFC2050 should be revised, the AC should not do
this, but another group. It is out of date and incomplete.

Randy Bush agrees with Marks second point, it would be nice to have
policies/procedures more aligned.

To the first point, this work is ongoing in the IETF. The only useful
addition one could be to compile and bundle this work for people who
do not have the time to follow all developments.

Mark points out that there is engineering work being done outside the
IETF, the AC could play a role in this.

Wilfried Woeber would like to share some of his experiences with this
'flying circus': sometimes one finds out that one was part of a feedback
loop. Requirement to interact with different people and groups, this
is a good thing about the Internet industry self-regulation. On the
issue of global policy, thinks the AC did a good start by asking the
RIRs to look at each other policies and define which ones are
different and why. Then this could be given back to the communities
asking if they want to keep it the way, because they are used to this
and it doesn't harm or if they want to put energy in it to try to make
them more aligned.

Carsten Schiefner wonders if there a transition plan from the
established RIRs to the emerging RIRs.

HPH explains that this is done in a bottom-up manner: ISPs in the area
cannot be forced to either stay or move, they have to show support.

Randy wonders if there will be competition between the RIRs?

Mirjam: No, RIRs operate in geographic regions, it has been working
well so far, they are not proposals on the table to change this.

Juergen Rauschenbach notes that the IPv6 policy document still
pending, because one of the communities did not agree. He wonders if
additional RIRs will impose even more delay on these kinds of issues.

Mirjam explains that policies are in place so that IPv6 operations are
not delayed through that. SubTLAS are handed out. ARIN community set
up a working group to look into the policy.

Richard Jimmerson from ARIN reports from the status of the ARIN
IPv6-WG.

Juergen suggests to implement regional policies if one of the regional
communities cannot make a decision to go along with the others.

Mirjam urges everybody to try to develop globally consistent
allocation policy for IPv6. The RIRs are still committed to that. She
reminds the audience that the fact that some of the IPv4 allocation
policies have not been aligned has created constant criticism. Lets
try to avoid this in IPv6.


Paul Mylotte: Presentation on global address forecast
(http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-38/presentations.html#LIR)

Juergen believes that both methods are flawed
1. method: H-Ratio has not taken into account
Even though there are 400 million addresses still available it will be
hard to push density above 116 million addresses used, currently
density at about 105 - 110 millions
2. method: good numbers if the growth is staying stable. There are
more factors: mobile devices, address needs in China etc.

Scott Markus also comments on method 2: not on the total numbers
allocated, but on the growth itself; change in the change, no change
in the base. Geoff Huston for instance calculates 7% of addresses
allocated

Mark MacFadden acknowledges that substantial work has been done in a
number of areas. Personally he believes the H-ratio is
questionable. He would like to see some harmony between the work that
is going on. They all relate to different things, difficult to
compare. We need to bring this information together. The AC should
take on this work.

Scott agrees with Mark. There was a discussion among the RIRs
themselves to put more effort into this, will make the base data more
widely available and put more work into this.


Leos Vegoda: presentation
(http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/archive/ripe-38/presentations.html#LIR)

Wilfried wonders if we really want to go into a lot of details
for such small amount of address space? Should there be a standard
size of address space where one is entitled to have one without any
questions asked?

Joao believes that this would mean a shift from assignments based on
actual need to more simplification.

Gerd is in favour of giving people public addresses instead of private
addresses if they don't want it. He would be happy to give everyone
a /29. This would make life easier for people and would also pushes the
deployment of IPv6.

John Klensin notes that these kind of limits (/29 in this case) seem
to be made up by magic. He advocates to be careful with looking at
these numbers and to draw conclusions from them or to assume all kinds
of things that might not be valid in the future.

PaulW points out that this proposal has also global implications. In
the APNIC region there is very rapid deployment of cable and ADSL in a
number of countries. Any decision that is made here, will be used and
seen as a precedent in other regions. This will increase the usage
rate significantly. He suggests to still have it dependend on the
network and the application, not on the technology. An assignment of
a /29 to all cable and ADSL customers seem to be very dangerous and
not at all necessary.

HPH proposes to introduce a separate assignment window for
infrastructure. Maybe together with some safeguard to review this once
a year or so. Discussion will be continued on the mailing list.


Finally the ASO General Assembly Meeting was announced to be held in
San Francisco on 4 April 2001.