Hi,

On 31 Mar 2025, at 14:32, Marco Schmidt <mschmidt@ripe.net> wrote:

More importantly, the RIPE NCC very rarely turns down requests. Instead, requesters often abandon their requests after we ask for additional information. This can be due to policy-related reasons, compliance issues (e.g., missing registration papers), or simply a change of mind. Since many requesters stop responding, the exact reasons are not known to the RIPE NCC.

Thank you, Marco, for providing this insight which is useful. 

It strikes me that the goals of the proposal are already met by the policy in place? Surely nothing to fix here?

It is true that single-homed AS are the norm (in RIPE), but that is not what the policy says. The policy is not enforced and many ASN are acquired by lying in the ASN request (confirmed and practiced by many people) or being very lax on the multihomeing requirement (we are multihomeing this customer to two points in our AS... wink... wink...). The problem with the current policy is that ASN numbers are "freely" available only to people that know that they can lie. Furthermore, the documentation in the RIPE database is not accurate because of this.

The intent behind the new text is to acknowledge the current state and recognize that with 32bit ASN this particularly bad. With this proposal, you can request an ASN to for any customer that has a reason to do BGP. This is inspired by the new policy at ARIN. Secondly, RIPE NCC will not tear down any networks. That's why more then 50% of allocated ASN don't follow the policy. The new text attempts to enforce the policy at the next ASN request (or regular audit). Hoping for an update of the RIPE database and other documentation to the current actual status.

Your specific use case of a company with diverse branches and not run as a single AS e.g. SpaceX - company network / Starlink - ISP or your example: hosting / ISP, is not possible under current policy and RFC 1930 (on which the current policy is based on). Under new text you can peer directly with your upstream or register a new LIR for the hosting branch and get the first ASN with no questions asked.

Best, Urban