Dear Colleagues, In our previous email we felt it was important to notify you that specific issues had arisen that had resulted in an increase in the current response time length and that we were working to address these. We would like to take this opportunity to explain in greater detail one of these issues. When we compare the first quarter of this year with the same quarter last year we see that the number of hostmaster tickets/requests relating to Mergers and Closures has risen from nearly 5 tickets per month to over 27 tickets per month (an increase of more than 500%). Mergers, closures and takeovers of LIRs are notably complex for a variety of reasons. The process of merging, closing or taking over another LIR involves the transfer of IP addresses and AS numbers. This is necessary to ensure that Internet resources are not lost and that they get registered properly in the RIPE Database. Often, the new or remaining LIR is not aware of all the addresses involved in the process. This is specifically the case with 'old' LIRs. It can also mean that part of the address space could be returned if, through a merger or takeover, an LIR receives more address space than needed. In many cases contact persons of the LIR closing or being taken over hold all of the knowledge and are no longer reachable. This could lead to wastage of Internet resources as the addresses are very difficult to trace. All of this uses a lot of resources. We realise that those LIRs merging, closing or being taken over already have address space to add to their own and their customers' networks, whereas other LIRs that send requests to the RIPE NCC are in need of address space. We would like to give priority to the latter, but for the reasons listed above it is not always possible to have a lower response time. The process must be carried out separately for every LIR involved and having to communicate with each LIR's contacts can often add to the delay. A new draft procedure document titled "Mergers, Acquisitions, Takeovers and Closures of LIRs" has been drafted and can be found at: http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/mem-services/registration/policies/draft-documen... We hope that this will provide better guidance for the LIRs who are involved in this process. Regards, Dominic Spratley, RIPE NCC