Dear all, At the upcoming RIPE meeting next week, the RIPE NCC will put forward a proposal attempting to clarify current policy on independent/portable address space. We are seeking the communities input on this matter. The RIPE NCC is currently experiencing an increased demand for portable address space, clearly visible through the amount of new members signing up from a need for portable address space but also through the amount of PI (Provider Independent) address requests received at the RIPE NCC. At this time there is no clear and consistent policy on any of these types of portable address space. - PI address space is discouraged and requestors are informed of disadvantages with PI space and what possible implications there may be. However, there are no criteria for obtaining PI address space. - PA allocations can be obtained by anyone who is a member of the RIPE NCC. (The RIPE NCC membership is open.) The LIR is only required to justify the first assignment out of that address block. As all members are required to request and justify each assignment made to customers or own infrastructure, we feel that current poorly defined PA Allocation criteria create an inconsistency in policy. In practice it means that anyone justifying the need of one IP address can receive a PA allocation (currently a /20 = 4096 addresses). This has resulted in an enormous growth of new members over the last three years. Whilst ARIN has a clearly defined policy on portable address space, APNIC has experienced the same dilemma as the RIPE NCC with their similar policies on portable address space. This was brought up and discussed at the APNIC meeting in Kuala Lumpur, March 2001. (see URL below.) As demonstrated in several recent studies of the changes in the Internet over the last years, it is clear that there is an increase of multi-homing taking place globally, an increase of smaller routes being announced in the Internet and an increased need for portable address space. The RIPE NCC wishes to develop a clear and consistent policy for portable address space in a realistic and pragmatic manner that also accommodates this increased need for portable address space. We will at the upcoming lir-wg meeting present statistics showing this trend and suggest possible steps forward. We wish to request the communities input in this discussion and we look forward to a fruitful discussion. Kind regards Nurani Nimpuno Registration Services Manager RIPE NCC http://www.ripe.net REFERENCES: -------------------- Policy documentation: "European Internet Registry Policies and Procedures", section 3.4.2.PA vs PI Space http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-185.html#toc34 "Provider Independent versus Provider Aggregatable Address Space" http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-127.html APNIC policy documentation: http://www.apnic.net/docs/add-manage-policy.html ARIN policy documentation: http://www.arin.net/regserv.html Presentations and papers: "Architectural Requirements for Inter-Domain Routing in the Internet" - Geoff Huston http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iab-bgparch-00.txt "The State of BGP routing" http://www.telstra.net/gih/papers/ietf/ietf50-plenary.pdf "Consistent and realistic policy framework for 'Portable' allocation and assignment" - Paul Wilson http://www.apnic.net/meetings/presentations/pa-pi-criteria.ppt Global policy document: "RIR comparative Policy Overview" http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/mem-services/registration/rir-comp-matrix-rev.ht...