Dear Colleagues, The RIPE NCC needs to implement a new status attribute for the inet6num object to reflect the new policy agreed by the RIPE, ARIN and APNIC communities. The RIPE NCC suggested the following new status attributes for the inet6num objects: - RIR-ALLOCATED (For allocations made by an RIR to an LIR) - LIR-ALLOCATED (For allocations made by an LIR or an LIR's downstream customer to another downstream organisation) - ASSIGNED (For assignments made to End User sites) There was discussion as to whether the terms ALLOCATED and ASSIGNED should be used or whether DELEGATED was the preferred term. It was pointed out that changing the terminology would require a full rewrite of all documentation, web sites and training material referring to these terms. It would also require the re-education of those who are familiar with these terms from IPv4. This process would be expensive. In addition to this, these terms are already defined in Section II of the IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy document. Changing these terms in the Database would require a significant rewrite to the policy itself. There was also a discussion as to whether the status attribute should reflect the portability of IPv6 address space. In the RIPE NCC Service Region there is a policy allowing /32 blocks to be issued to the networks hosting Root Nameservers. There is also a policy allowing IXP networks to receive a /64 or /48 for neutral peering meshes. However, there is not (yet) a policy allowing End User networks to receive a block of Provider Independent address space. Until there is a policy allowing End Users to carry address space with them when they change providers it is probably not appropriate to give assignments a status indicating that they are *not* portable. For these reasons the RIPE NCC would like to implement the new status attribute, as described on 31 May 2002 and above, as soon as possible. The software implementation will allow configuration of different labeling for the status attribute quite easily. Kind regards, -- leo vegoda RIPE NCC, Registration Services Assistant Manager