I don't think the situation's that different. I case ARIN's going to adopt the '*may* return to IANA' version I definitely see no sense in any other RIR implementing a *must*. Quite to the contrary. In this part I've to somewhat agree with Randy and unfortunately have to raise the question why we should return any addresses to IANA if ARIN decides to keep everything for themselves (with quite a bunch of legacy /8's being handled there). Marcus

Exactly. And that part of the policy is still common. So even if ARIN changes the conditions under which they decide to return addresses to the pool for the common good, the policy can still go forward for adoption as a global policy. Of course the other RIRs might decide that ARIN's stance changes their minds on whether to adopt this policy, but that is a different situation.

Nigel

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Engineering IP Services Versatel West GmbH Unterste-Wilms-Strasse 29 D-44143 Dortmund Fon: +49-(0)231-399-4486 | Fax: +49-(0)231-399-4491 marcus.gerdon@versatel.de | www.versatel.de Sitz der Gesellschaft: Dortmund | Registergericht: Dortmund HRB 21738 Geschäftsführer: Marc Lützenkirchen, Dr. Hai Cheng, Dr. Max Padberg, Peter Schindler ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AS8881 / AS8638 / AS13270 | MG3031-RIPE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------