On 18/03/2010 16:06, Leo Vegoda wrote:
I agree with James that by distinguishing between 16 and 32-bit AS Numbers in section 2, this text is inconsistent with the main ASN policy. I suspect that the RIPE NCC staff can reserve a couple of small AS Numbers for this purpose and there is such a large number of big AS Numbers that a reservation is probably not necessary.
The latter is certainly the case. When drafting the policy, I didn't want to prevent the RIPE NCC doing what they think might be necessary with ASN32s. Under the terms of the policy proposal, they're authorised to reserve some ASN32s; whether they choose to actually reserve them is an operational matter for them to decide. As regards distinguishing between ASN16s and ASN32s, the fact of the matter is that there are technical differences between the two, regardless of what the current policies state. Perhaps the main ASN policy needs to note this?
The proposed policy text does not state that these assignments are subject to a contract, presumably because that is specified in the text of the main policy. Am I right in thinking that requesters would need to sign a contract to get resources under this policy?
Yes, correct. This is covered by section 3.4 - "Compliance with Other RIPE NCC Assignment Policies". There is value in not repeating policy text which appears in other documents, although it would probably be useful to note the "IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment Policies for the RIPE NCC Service Region" document explicitly.
While it is an implementation detail, it would be nice if the time frame was documented in the contract.
yes, good point.
Also, if I have read it correctly, this proposal text removes the publication requirement for assignments made to experiments and academic research. What is the reason for removing this requirement?
Several reasons actually. - I'm not sure of the intent of the original experimentation requirement, but suspect that it was a quid-pro-quo: that in order to make it possible for researchers to get large chunks of address space, they had to prove that they were really doing research, and in order to prove it, there was an obligation to publish the results. But given that the ipv4 address assignment landscape is shortly going to change irrevocably, it didn't make sense (to me) to have two temporary assignment categories. - given this, it would be discrimination or an encumbrance which did not apply to other assignment categories. This struck me as not being particularly fair. - most research journals will not accept articles which have been published elsewhere or where there is a contingent requirement for the researcher to publish elsewhere. "Elsewhere" includes FoC publishing on the Internet. This could create a chain of potentially serious problems for any researcher who needed temporary address space for the purposes of their work, given that the research cycle generally goes: grant application -> work -> publish -> grant application based on impact factor of journal where previous work was published. - if there were such an encumbrance in place for just researchers, they would probably end up requesting the address space on terms which had no such encumbrance (e.g. time limited project). By removing the encumbrance requirement, people will be less tempted to be dishonest on the application form.
Finally, in the rationale section a., I think the phrase "a negligible effect on the final RIPE NCC IANA-supplied IPv4 address pool depletion date" should be "a negligible effect on the IANA-supplied RIPE NCC address pool depletion date" to improve clarity.
That would be clearer, yes. Nick