[members-discuss] [ncc-announce] [news] RIPE NCC Members and Multiple LIR Accounts

* Hank Nussbacher <hank at efes.iucc.ac.il>

> I think members opening additional LIR accounts goes against the spirit
> and history of RIPE.

Multiple LIR accounts aren't a problem, the way I see it...

If, for whatever reason, an organisation wants to have multiple LIR
accounts, then that is fine. I can think of several reasons why a
single entity might want to have multiple LIR accounts, such as:

- One account for each country the etity is operating in (no.acme,
  se.acme, fi.acme, ...)
- Separate accounts for separate and possibly quite autonomous
  organisational units (eu.acme-3gpp, eu.acme-fttx, eu.acme-docsis, ...)
- Ending up with accounts as a result of a merger or acquisition (us.hp,
  us.compaq, us.dec, ...)

> I also believe RIPE should not grant multiple LIR accounts additional
> requests for /22s.

Agreed. This is the crux of the issue. Additional LIR accounts
should not be a mechanism through which a single entity can circumvent
address policy (or gain extra votes at the GM for that matter).

I would therefore be supportive of the NCC starting to interpret and
implement the «last /8» policy so that multiple LIRs managed by a
single entity are collectively limited to a single /22 allocation
(except in merger/acquisition cases where both LIRs have already
received their last /22).

It would also be important that "entity" isn't understood to simply
mean "an entry in a country's organisation register", as that would
leave a gaping and trivially exploitable loophole.

Tore