Dear Address Policy WG,
Here is the first draft agenda for RIPE 83's Address Policy WG. We
want to give as much time as possible to discussion. For this reason,
we are continuing with the concept of pre-publishing videos and slides
for report items on the agenda. This way, people can review the
presentations at their leisure, allowing us to dedicate more time to
answering questions and discussing issues with each other.
You will be able to watch pre-recorded presentations and review slides
from Monday, 15 November. They will be available on
https://ripe83.ripe.net and we will send a note linking to the
relevant page.
Kind regards,
Leo Vegoda
for the Address Policy WG co-Chairs
A. Administrative Matters (5 mins)
Chairs
Welcome, thanking the scribe, approving the minutes, etc.
B. ASO AC Report Summary and Questions (10 mins)
This will be pre-recorded and published a week ahead.
A 2 slide recap will be presented live before questions are taken.
James Kennedy / Nurani Nimpuno / Hervé Clement
C. NRO NC/ASO AC Candidate Introductions (10 mins)
This will be pre-recorded and published a week ahead.
A 2 slide recap will be presented live before questions are taken.
Ulka Athale, Sr. Communications Officer, RIPE NCC
D. Q&A on Current Policy Topics (15 mins)
This will be pre-recorded and published a week ahead.
A 2 slide recap will be presented live before questions are taken.
Angela Dall'Ara, Policy Officer, RIPE NCC
E. Q&A on Feedback from the RIPE NCC Registry Services (15 mins)
This will be pre-recorded and published a week ahead.
A 2 slide recap will be presented live before questions are taken.
Marco Schmidt, Registry Services, RIPE NCC
F. RIPE Database Requirements TF (10 mins)
This will be pre-recorded and published a week ahead.
A 2 slide recap will be presented live before questions are taken.
James Kennedy
G. Break (5 mins)
H. Review of RIPE IPv6 Policy Goals (20 mins)
Dear colleagues,
During RIPE 82, we provided you with an update on our observation of
IPv6 stockpiling [1]. Based on the feedback we received and in
preparation for the coming RIPE meeting, we would like to give you
another update on that issue.
According to the IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy, an LIR
can receive up to a /29 IPv6 allocation without needing to supply any
additional information. The RIPE community considered this size
sufficient for most organisations for long-term IPv6 deployment.
Additionally, LIRs may qualify allocations greater than /29 by
submitting documentation that reasonably justifies this request [2].
However, over the past few years we have noticed that some organisations
are collecting multiple IPv6 allocations in ways that are permitted by
current RIPE policies but might conflict with the above-mentioned intent
of the IPv6 policy. For example, it is possible for a single RIPE NCC
member to receive a /29 allocation for each of the multiple LIR accounts
that it holds. This is the result of a policy change in 2018 [3]. LIRs
can also receive multiple IPv6 allocations via policy transfers without
needing any further justification. However, when the IPv6 transfer
policy was discussed in 2014, it was assumed that there wouldn't be an
active transfer market [4].
We have gathered data showing the significant development of the
collection of IPv6:
- Almost 700 IPv6 allocations have been transferred in 2021 so far (and
there have been more than 3,900 transfers since policy implementation in
2015)
- About 60% all IPv6 allocations ever handed out by the RIPE NCC are now
held as multiple allocations
- In the last three months, more than 75% of all new allocations were
given to members that already hold at least one IPv6 allocation
- More than 1,500 members hold multiple IPv6 allocations, exceeding the
size /29
- Almost 100 members hold more than 10 IPv6 allocations (the maximum is
102 IPv6 allocations held by one member)
It is the RIPE NCC’s understanding that some of these situations are
within the intent of previous policy changes, for example, to avoid
renumbering of deployed IPv6 networks during holdership changes, or if a
large company has multiple network departments that prefer to manage
their own allocation.
However, the huge volume indicates that most are for other reasons.
While members can collect multiple IPv6 allocations without evaluation
by the RIPE NCC, we still were able to gather some feedback how members
plan to use their allocations. Many members simply stockpile them for an
undefined future use, others plan to use them for activities which
temporarily require a vast amount of IPs, and some plan to offer IPv6 on
a large scale to other ISPs in their country.
We believe that this situation could create several issues:
- IPv6 might be deployed in conflict with RIPE policies, underlying RFCs
and other best practices, resulting in challenges to that IPv6
deployment once the policy violation is discovered during an audit
- There could be a negative impact on the quality of the registry if
large parts of allocations were given to third parties without clear
registration requirements
- The policy requirement to justify larger IPv6 allocations would then
be rendered useless
If you agree that this is a problem, we would like to initiate a
discussion in this Working Group about possible solutions. We see at
least two potential paths forward.
Firstly, if the Working Group believes that this trend is an indication
of a widespread need for IPv6 address space larger than /29, then the
requirement for justification could perhaps be adjusted for a larger
allocation size. Members could then more easily get the address space
they need, but as an aggregated block. Stockpiling would still be
possible under this potential policy change, in fact on an even bigger
scale.
Secondly, if the Working Group believes that this trend is in conflict
with the original intent of the IPv6 policy, adjustments to the policy
can be proposed that give the RIPE NCC a stronger mandate to enforce it.
One challenge here would be defining what IPv6 usages are considered
within or outside of the intent of the policy and how to ensure better
oversight without too much impact on IPv6 deployment.
There might be other options that this working group can consider and
discuss.
If required, the RIPE NCC can provide additional information for this
discussion.
Kind regards,
Marco Schmidt
Registry Services Assistant Manager
RIPE NCC
[1] https://ripe82.ripe.net/presentations/7-RIPE82-Feeback-from-RS.pdf
from slide 9
[2] https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-738#initial_allocation
[3] https://www.ripe.net/participate/policies/proposals/2018-01
[4] https://www.ripe.net/participate/policies/proposals/2014-12
