On Apr 15, 2010, at 1:40 PM, Nigel Titley wrote:
And this policy is going to be completely ineffective once IANA has less than a /8 in store... which is next year, remember. One of the goals of 2009-01 was to provide a means for IANA to accept and allocate smaller than /8s.
The policy remains effective even after IANA has less than a /8 in store, as any subsequent returned address space will still be subject to it. Since address space can be returned for numerous reasons, the policy will almost certainly see some use if adopted.
But I re-iterate. I'm only trying to sort out the washup of 2009-01. It isn't ever likely to be a global policy now.
In the absence of such a policy, there is no incentive at all to return resources to the IANA, as they lack a policy to reissue them (in the case of smaller blocks) or will issue them entirely to one RIR (in the case of a /8) which is to the detriment of all other regions. While having the address return be designated by the RIR may not be ideal, at least in the ARIN region that is considered a far better outcome than the non-functional IANA that we're presently heading towards. /John John Curran President and CEO ARIN