[address-policy-wg] 2013-03 New Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (No Need - Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Clean up)

Hello Tore and Gert,

According to the current policy your main reason to request an IP address must be that you need it to use on a network. 

As soon as you remove this, that the IP address is actually needed on a "network" (network can be LIR's or End Users, does not matter), you make them a commodity. As soon as you do that within your policy, you stamp that they actually are money making assets to be turned into some value now or later and this practice is all fine according to the policy too. This means an LIR can request these resources to do whatever they want to do with them including requesting them not to be used on any network of their own or an End Users' at all but for some other reason. One of these reasons will be deliberately passing them on to a paying 3rd party who may or may not use them on any other network either. I think we all see this happening as one scenario. 

I do not think this is good practice or responsible address management. 
 
This is how I see this proposal will have an impact. I believe with this we are moving far away from a core principle; that we, as the RIPE Community, are dealing with networks and resources for networks. If you take the network notion from the address management policy, you are then dealing with some numbers separated with few dots with monetary value only.

Rest assured I am aware of the developments in the industry and yes I know how the last /8 policy works too. 
In fact I was working at the RIPE NCC when it was at its earliest proposal stage and worked on it at various levels, from proposal, Impact analysis and resulting policy documentation within and across RIR regions. I remember there was also a strong argument in these circles, not too long ago, that as we reach the end of IPv4 pool, the more policy changes we make the more it will be disruptive to the system overall. 

And so in fact I am curious what is the rush of this proposal now that RIPE NCC is allocating from the last /8 and that soon it will be exhausted anyways and what is wrong with keeping what we have as policy as long as this last bit of /8 lasts. Maybe your proposal will be more suitable once everything has ran out and RIPE NCC does not have anything more to provide other than few recycled/returned (hard to imagine if that will be ever happen…) space.  

Finally Gert seems to get my point with his example of someone going through the effort of opening 5000 new LIRs. 
I am not saying this will happen but even someone going to through the effort of opening maybe 2 or three just to get more address space for the wrong reasons should be telling us something that our policy is missing some core notion, that notion being IP addresses are mainly there to be used on networks as soon as they leave an RIR pool.    

Kind regards
Filiz Yilmaz
 
On 24 Jul 2013, at 18:50, Tore Anderson <tore at fud.no> wrote:

> Hi again Filiz,
> 
>> In order not to have people get lost between our inline comments, I
>> will only attempt to respond to you taking quotes from your mail. 
>> Apologies if this distorts the logical thought process you had put
>> in.
> 
> No problem, I'll do the same. :-)
> 
>> Those principle based registration and address management
>> requirements were in the old policy between the lines, pointing to
>> people notions like anti-hoarding practices through "need based"
>> requirements.
> 
> Actually, you don't have to read between the lines to find the reason
> for "need based"/"anti-hoarding". It is explicitly stated in the policy,
> specifically section 3.0.3: «To maximise the lifetime of the public IPv4
> address space».
> 
> And this of course made perfect sense. If the LIRs had been free to grab
> as much as they pleased with no checks and bounds, that would in all
> likelihood have caused the NCC's public pool of IPv4 space, and by
> extension the IANA's, to deplete many many years ago. It was all about
> delaying the Tragedy of the Commons as much as possible. Had we as a
> community done a much better job with IPv6, we could have avoided it
> from happening altogether, but that ship has sailed - the Tragedy
> occurred last September.
> 
>> So once you take those bits out, you also take those notions and
>> principles out of the policy. That was my point and so I disagree
>> that your proposal does not change anything. In fact it is bringing a
>> big change, changing address delegation from "I want it because I
>> need it on a network"
> 
> There is a difference between a Service Provider and an Internet
> Registry. The former operates networks, the latter delegates numbers.
> Often a single organisation fills both roles, but this is not a
> requirement, just a convenience. You could easily run an LIR from your
> laptop or tablet in the local coffee shop - all you need is an e-mail
> account, really (and money to pay the membership fee). So when it comes
> to allocations, "need" isn't borne from "I need it on a network", but
> rather "I need it so I can assign it to an End User".
> 
>> "I want it and I am a member of the RIPE NCC so I can get it
> 
> Get it from *where* and *who*, exactly?
> 
>>> What constitutes "good address management" is something left to the
>>> LIRs to decide for themselves.
>> 
>> I tend to disagree with this too. LIRs are members of the RIPE NCC
>> but policies are developed by the entire RIPE Community, which is a
>> bigger stakeholder. Those views should be reflected in the policy to
>> be remembered and documented by the LIRs.
> 
> Clearly, if the RIPE Community makes a policy that says X, then the LIRs
> must do X. But *as of right now*, the policy does not define any
> principles of "good address management", hence, LIRs are free to do what
> they wish.
> 
>> I see your point but policy does not mean "policing". To my
>> knowledge, RIPE NCC never sent agents to LIR premises to check if the
>> justification they documented fit with the reality or not.
> 
> Indeed, the whole "needs-based" system is entirely built on trust. The
> NCC is not the IPv4 Police (and I wouldn't want them to be either for
> simple cost/benefit reasons).
> 
>> And this still does not mean that policy is not going to be there to
>> remind people that this is a common pool of resources we are dealing
>> with and its management requires some degree of responsibility. We
>> might as well then not have a policy document at all and just have a
>> click, pay and get your resource button on the RIPE NCC website.
> 
> Again, get that resource from *where* and *who*?
> 
>> If I am an LIR and I go to the RIPE NCC and ask for a resource [...]
> 
> ...the RIPE NCC necessarily say "sorry, we're fresh out". (Except if you
> didn't pick up your last /22 yet, see below.)
> 
>> I am not a lawyer, but hypothetically speaking, if your proposal gets
>> accepted there is some (again totally hypothetical…) potential that
>> some LIRs may chose to rush and get whatever is left in the NCC pool
> [...]
>> And then these LIRs who were lucky to get all the space they wanted
> 
> No, this is completely impossible, and to be honest I am starting to
> wonder if you are familiar with the "last /8 policy" at all, or if you
> are under the impression that 2013-03 proposes to remove it (it does
> not). In a nutshell, it is the following:
> 
> An LIR can get one (1) /22, no more, no less. Sizing according to "need"
> has *already been abandoned*; it doesn't matter one bit if the LIR's
> actual need is for 1 address or 1.000.000.000.000 addresses - the only
> thing you'll get, ever, is 1.024.
> 
> The only way an LIR could possibly get "all the space they wanted", is
> if they wanted 1.024 addresses or less. But in that case, they would be
> able to get it under today's policy, too.
> 
> Best regards,
> Tore Anderson
>