Hi Felipe

If I was in the need of additional IPv4 space, I would much rather go to a location that is (a) central (b) legitimate (c) verifies that the transferer actually has the rights to the address space and (d) where I can be reasonably assured the sellers abide by RIPE policies.

I assume following recent discussions that those brokers found breaking RIPE policy are now actively being removed, so this list is probably the best I could hope for. And any other listing service would not have the ability that you do to verify that the user has the address space in question registered to them.

I would much rather this service continue to be maintained by the NCC than have to trawl the internet and deal with some of the shadier characters out there. And I don't feel it is a big ask of the NCC, as it falls under the core remit of responsible stewardship of the resources.

And a note on the timing and your perceived utilisation statistics. Just because I have not had a need for it just yet, does not mean I cannot foresee a circumstance in the near future where I will need it. We have only just reached the point of IPv4 runout.

I would also raise concerns that "a full reimplementation would be needed to continue supporting it" - how has it been allowed to be developed in such an unmaintainable manner that this is the only way to continue operating it?

Regards

David



On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 12:59, Felipe Victolla Silveira <fvictolla@ripe.net> wrote:
Dear members,

In my update at RIPE 80[1], I mentioned that we would like to decommission the IPv4 Transfer Listing Service unless there there were strong objections. So far, we have heard no requests to keep the service.

In case anyone is unfamiliar with this, the listing service allows members to offer/request IPv4 prefixes for transfer:
https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/resource-transfers-and-mergers/listing

While there are currently 681,000 IPv4 addresses "offered" on the listing service, when we attempted to match LIRs that had used the service with those that went on to make a transfer, we couldn't find much of a correlation. Of the 1,969 LIRs that transferred resources in our service region last year, only 76 had posted on the listing service and it's not clear whether the service actually connected the offering/receiving parties for these cases.

As the listing service is reaching the end of its lifespan, a full reimplementation would be needed to continue supporting it. Given that the listing service does not appear to be adding much in terms of value, spending development time on this does seem like a good use of members' funds.

We are therefore planning to discontinue the IPv4 Transfer Listing Service on 22 June. If you have strong objections to this, please let us know or share feedback on members-discuss.

Regards

Felipe Victolla Silveira
Chief Operations Officer
RIPE NCC

[1] RIPE NCC Operational Update:
https://ripe80.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/28-Operational-Update-RIPE-80-to-upload.pdf