[address-policy-wg] English Language (was: Summary of the PI Task Force's recent discussions)

>People are requesting *multiple* PI blocks because they can't get a PA
>allocation, and that seems to be just wrong to me.

Something strange is happening to the English language here. Whenever I 
read PI and PA, I have a mental concept of independent blocks that I can 
announce, and borrowed blocks that I get from my provider's aggregate. In 
this set of mental concepts, a provider gets a PI block from an RIR and 
then allocates PA blocks to their customers.

But after stumbling through this thread, I checked the RIPE website and 
discovered that the IPv4 policies state:

    LIRs are allocated Provider Aggregatable address space that they 
    assign to their End Users and announced as one prefix. 

The problem is that the word "aggretable" means something that is capable 
of being aggregated. The block that a customer receives from the LIR is a 
part of a larger aggregate and is therefore "aggregatable". But the block 
that the LIR receives from the RIR is not necessarily aggregatable because 
there is no guarantee that the RIR will reserve adjacent blocks for the 
LIR. I know that the practice is to reserve the adjacent blocks for some 
period of time, but there are a lot of LIRs which have multiple 
non-aggregatable blocks from the RIRs.

This is important because if we are not clear and consistent in our use of 
the language, then we create confusion and misunderstandings.

For instance, in the ARIN world, PA stands for Provider Assigned in order 
to make it clear that the RIR gives providers PI space and the providers 
cut it up into PA blocks for their customers. It's like lending and 
borrowing. If I lend you a bicycle then you are borrowing it from me. Then 
you can lend the borrowed bicycle to your friend so that you are both a 
borrower and a lender of the bicycle.

It seems to me that the distinction needs to be made between 
network-independent address blocks and network-dependent or 
network-attached ones. 

NI Network-Independent address blocks are allocated to an organization by 
the RIR and can be announced in whole or in part by any network with which 
the organization has a relationship.

NA Network-Attached address blocks are assigned to an organization by an 
LIR and can only be used with the network(s) operated by that LIR.

Then we could drop the acronyms and start talking about independent 
address blocks and attached network blocks.

Personally, I don't believe that all 5 RIRs should have the same policies 
but I do believe that all 5 RIRs should use the same terminology and 
language to talk about addressing as long as the talking is done in 
English.
--Michael Dillon