On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Nigel Titley <nigel@titley.com> wrote:

> The ARIN community identified that the decision to return recovered
> address space to the IANA is a local (not global) policy decision.
> ARIN's present practice has been to return to the IANA any significant
> address space which was voluntarily returned to ARIN (for examples,
> see the following writeup:
> <http://blog.icann.org/2008/02/recovering-ipv4-address-space/>)
> and until a new ARIN policy is established, we will continue that
> practice.

Excellent... and plaudits to ARIN for their selfless behaviour, modulo,
of course, any definition of what constitutes "significant".

Nigel would you not consider directly returning 4 entire /8s back to IANA not significant? Since there is no policy currently by which IANA can hand out anything less than a /8 it seems that returning smaller blocks to IANA so they can be stuck there might not be such a great idea? How about a global policy directing IANA how to hand out smaller blocks to the RIRs might be in order?

That policy is here

http://www.icann.org/en/general/allocation-IPv4-rirs.html

Allocation Principles

The IANA will allocate IPv4 address space to the RIRs in /8 units.
The IANA will allocate sufficient IPv4 address space to the RIRs to support their registration needs for at least an 18 month period.
The IANA will allow for the RIRs to apply their own respective chosen allocation and reservation strategies in order to ensure the efficiency and efficacy of their work.

Thanks!

----Cathy