* Tore Anderson
I'm perplexed that the APNIC staff is uncertain whether or not 2014-05 is compatible with their policy. The way I read them, they unequivocally are.
I was pointed this recording of APNIC's policy-sig meeting which sheds some more light on the matter (the relevant presentation starts at 1:33): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cXk8BrMJJU It would appear there are two distinct problems: 1) APNIC feels that 2014-05 causes a circular policy loop for APNIC->RIPE transfers, cf. the slide that's up at 1:36:30. As I understand it, the problem is that APNIC's policy says any requirements on the receiver is «as defined in [RIPE's] tranfer policy», which in turn says the «the RIPE NCC will work with the resource holder to fulfil[sic] any requirements of [APNIC]». I personally believe this is a misinterpretation on APNIC's part, as my understanding on the latter language is that it is only to be applied when the sending RIR insists on particular requirements being imposed on the receiver, that which are not found in our own set of policies. The most obvious example of such a requirement would be ARIN's insistence on «reciprocal, compatible, needs-based policies» (cf. https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#eight4). For APNIC, on the other hand, there does not appear to be any policy requirement that would require this language to come into effect. (They could still use it for non-policy requirements though, such as demanding a transfer fee from the RIPE region recipient, but I digress.) Therefore, the receiver of a transfer from APNIC to RIPE would only be subject to any requirements in our own policies (i.e., ripe-623 section 5.5 or 6.4). In any case, 2014-05 probably needs to be amended so that it is clear that the statements «when Internet number resources are transferred from another RIR, the RIPE NCC will work with the resource holder to fulfil any requirements of the sending RIR» and «the RIPE NCC will also comply with the commitments imposed by the receiving RIR, in order to facilitate the transfer», is only to be used if and only if there other RIR has an absolute requirement that does not exist in our policies, and furthermore that they are used to allow compliance with that particular requirement alone. 2) Assuming the previous point is handled, there is an additional concern that if 2014-05 passes, it will cause ARIN to declare that APNIC's policy is no longer compatible. It wasn't entirely clear to me if they though this would happen instantaneously (by ARIN-the-RIR, not the community), or if they were worried that the ARIN community would react by changing their policies to make them incompatible. - The instantaneous alternative does strike me as somewhat far fetched, considering that ARIN has already deemed APNIC's policy to be «reciprocal, compatible, needs-based», and the fact that 2014-05 doesn't change a single word in neither ARIN's nor APNIC's policy documents. That said, obviously I can't know for certain if 2014-04 could possibly cause such an instantaneous change in how ARIN interprets APNIC's policy text. Maybe John could chime in? - The other alternative, where 2014-05's passing would prompt the ARIN community to change their policy document so that APNIC<->ARIN transfers are no longer possible, does seems more plausible, yet somewhat speculative as we have no idea whether the ARIN community cares about 2014-05 at all and if so what they think about it. Another possibility, which was suggested by one commentator, is that the APNIC community preempts such an ARIN policy change, by changing their own policy instead (if they feel it is necessary in order to keep the ARIN community happy that is). In any case, as other RIRs' policies are out of our hands, I don't think we can do much about it in 2014-05, unless there is some clear guidance from APNIC and/or ARIN on how 2014-05 could be amended to make them happy (assuming either of them are unhappy in the first place). While I'm a firm believer in letting the individual RIR communities write their own policies without other regions trying to influence the process, Inter-RIR policies are necessarily exceptions. Tore