[LACNIC/Politicas] Proposed Policy: 4-Byte AS Number Policy Proposal

[Geoff Huston]

Hi,

This policy proposal was submitted to all five RIRs in early December. In 
the intervening period the discussion on the ARIN policy discussion mailing 
list has undoubtedly been the most active of all the regions. For those who 
do not follow the ARIN list, the points arising from that discussion as 
they relate to changes in the text of the policy so far appear to be:

a) that the section on terminology should use a period ('.') as a separator 
between the high and low 16 bit fields rather than a colon (':') as 
originally proposed, in order to reduce confusion with delimiters in BGP 
communities (this change has been done in the LACNIC proposal).

b) that the proposal replace the term "2 byte" with "16 bit" and "4 byte" 
with "32 bit" due to the somewhat imprecise nature of the definition of a 
"byte"  (this change has been done in the LACNIC proposal)

Other topics of discussion on the ARIN list have been
- whether the terminology and nomenclature sessions should be included in 
the policy proposal
- whether the specification of dates are reasonable in this context
- whether the policy alters the current sequential number allocation 
registry practice
- the criteria (if any) that should be applied to a request for an AS 
number of the "other" type
- the desireable size of the private use AS number pool

No further changes to the policy are proposed at this point in time as a 
clear outcome of these discussions, as the discussion has raised points in 
favour and against making further changes to the policy proposal.

Its also worth noting that this is intended to be a temporary policy 
associated with transition to the larger number pool, and at the end of the 
period, proposed to be 1 January 2010, this policy is no longer in force, 
and the larger 32-bit AS number space will be managed as a single pool 
using the current policies and procedures.

regards,

     Geoff