ARIN IP6 policy for those with legacy IP4 Space

Thu Apr 8 19:17:30 UTC 2010

> Just because the benefit of being cautious isn't clear doesn't mean we
> should simply throw caution to the wind entirely and go back to the "old
> ways."  It seems clear to many now that a lot of the legacy allocations,
> /8's in particular were issued in a way that has left IPv4 inefficiently
> allocated and with lack of any agreements by the resource holders to
> have any responsibility to do anything about it.

There's a lot of space between throwing caution to the wind and the
current set of agreements.  The current v6 agreements read a lot like
the v4 agreements.

> If we just eliminated the RIRs and agreements governing terms of access
> to v6 allocations, IF later, we find a problem with the process and
> start to run out of space, we end up in the same situation.  Suddenly we
> have to form these organizations again, and institute new allocation
> policies for new allocations, but again lack any recourse for all those
> people that "greedily" ate up as much space as they could.

Then guard against _that_, which is a real problem.

> I think there's a continued need to keep an organization in charge of
> accounting for the space to whom we as resource holders are accountable
> and whom is also accountable to us.  Later on, when we realize we've
> gone wrong somewhere (and it will happen) and need to make changes to
> policy, there is a process by which we can do it where all the parties
> involved already have an established relationship.

That sets off my radar detector a bit.  If you're justifying the need 
for current policies with that statement, I'd have to disagree...  the
desire to potentially make changes in the future is not itself a 
compelling reason to have strongly worded agreements.  Even in v4land,
we've actually determined that one of the few relatively serious 
reasons we'd like to reclaim space (depletion) is probably impractical.

With that in mind, claims that there needs to be thorough accounting
kind of comes off like "trust us, we're in charge, we know what we need
but we can't really explain it aside from invoking the boogeyman."

On one hand?  You absolutely don't want to go around delegating /20's
to organizations that clearly have no need.  On the other hand, you 
don't need heavyhanded agreements to avoid that in the first place.

This is kind of off-topic for NANOG, so I'll stick with what I've
said unless someone has a really good point.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
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