Hi Nurani, Thanks for your comments, and I agree that your "the Hostmaster Role's" point of view is of interest of course, eventually, but that the community still has to do a bit more thinking and brain-storming before we can wrap up.
However, what I can say is that we at the RIPE NCC are very aware of how complicated it is for new LIRs to learn all policies and procedures involved in obtaining IP address space and AS numbers. (And indeed there are quite a few.)
One of the things that adds to complexity (IMHO) is the fact that the policies (you have to make your needs known, and to do so in a way that can be reviewed) are not clearly separated from the procedures involved. While I think the basic *policy* is more or less straightforward: You get what you need and as much as you can reasonably argue for, and we don't interfere with the engineering approach for your networks by making *policy* that cripples certain design approaches. (With a very few exceptions) We do, however require the applicant to think about alternative approaches, and to make a conscious decision in favour of one or another approach, like rfc1918, http 1.1, ... What indeed has become too complex is the *procedures*. What has been appropriate a few years ago, is not necessarily appropriate any longer for every application everywhere. The Internet has changed a bit. There are more diverse entities active now which have to look at some other boundary conditions in addition to network engineering and address space conservation (as the "only" goal) like size, internal structure, business models, investments, security, helpdesk and customer care issues, and last but not least privacy issues....
Although it has always been seen as part of the hostmaster role to educate the LIRs, it is not an easy task with the current dramatic growth of LIRs. We have partly discussed this with the May 17 Taskforce and we are also constantly discussing it internally at the RIPE NCC, trying to find more efficient ways of coping with the workload and the growth.
Indeed.
This may be a PR problem. It is also possible that the policies simply have become too complicated for new members. (Can it be that the policies which are developed by experienced and clueful members of the Internet community is not necessarily easy for newer, less experienced LIRs?) Is the problem possibly a combination of the two?
We should put the effort in dealing with the scaling problem of the *procedures*. While I do not know (and do not want to know) which application made Leo "go public", I would like to report to the community that I had a few very interesting private discussions during the last RIPE Meeting with a sizable company planning the roll-out of a "mass-market" product, and they indeed were a) present at the meeting, and b) had *very* sound questions to ask and were looking for input from the community. So "they" are out there, trying to do "the right thing". But the community should try to understand their position as well, and the scaling problems. Otherwise nobody should be surprised to hear the claims, that it is not possible for them to work with and as part of the "established" community, and that "they" have to build something else that fits their needs.... Wilfried.