[LACNIC/Politicas] Summary LACNIC Policy Discussion March 1st - 12th

[German Valdez]

Friends,
 
In an effort to promote the participation of other sectors of the Internet
community of Latin America and the Caribbean as well as of other regions, we
will begin sending weekly summaries, in English of the issues presented and
discussed on LACNIC's mailing lists.
 
We would also like to take the opportunity to remind you that LACNIC mailing
lists are also open to contributions in English and Portuguese.
 
Summary of the discussions held on the Public Policy List between March
1-12.
 
MULTICAST ADDRESS ASSIGNMENT POLICY
 
A proposal was presented by Guillermo Cicileo (March 1) for LACNIC to join
other RIRs to instantiate RFC 3138, which defines a range of addresses to be
used for multicast applications (in case other solutions such as SSM, GLOP,
etc. cannot be used). Concretely, the proposal requests that LACNIC assign a
/20 block, just as ARIN is doing. The detailed proposal, in English, can be
found included in the message at the following address:
 
http://mail.lacnic.net/pipermail/politicas/2007-March/006879.html
 
It was clarified that the blocks specified in RFC 3138 are not routable
addresses but are within the multicast address range (224.0.0.0 to
239.255.255.255). They are used to represent "multicast groups" to which
senders and receivers can subscribe but are not present in normal routing
tables. The RFC mentions that within this segment there is an assignable
range that may be distributed by all RIRs.
 
In addition, it was noted that IANA is already assigning these addresses.
The justification for RIRs to participate in the assignment of these
segments is taken from the proposal's original author, who argues that small
companies that need addresses do not have access to IANA while large
companies do, despite the fact that IANA staff has denied the latter
allegation.
 
It was observed that there is no need for a similar policy, as this would
imply assigning RIRs space reserved by the IETF, in addition to requiring a
global policy which would demand a lot of time and effort. It was suggested
to focus efforts on IPv6 multicast, as IPv4 has not had the anticipated
success. It was added that in order for RIRs to provide this service there
might be a cost for the service involved, something which does not currently
happen with IANA. 
 
The current status of this discussion is that the Policy Mailing List
moderator has suggested that the person who presented the proposal send an
e-mail explaining the use of multicast addresses.
 
PROPOSAL FOR PROVIDER-INDEPENDENT IPv6 ALLOCATIONS TO END-USER
ORGANIZATIONS.
 
A proposal was presented by Jordi Palet (March 6) for the allocation of
provider-independent IPv6 space to organizations that are considered
end-users. In order to qualify for such blocks the applicant cannot be an
ISP/LIR and must qualify for receiving IPv4 space from LACNIC. The minimum
size of said allocation must be a /48, although based on the documentation
it could be larger.
 
This issue is now open for comments.
 
REPORT ON THE IPv4 COUNTDOWN PROPOSAL
 
This report, sent by Ricardo Patara (Registry Services Manager), describes
the discussion generated at the APNIC 23 meeting in relation to the IPv4
Countdown proposal.
 
Basically, this proposal proposes establishing a specific date for the
exhaustion of the IPv4 address pool available for making allocations. The
proposal further stated that this should be implemented globally in all RIRs
so as to act in a synchronized manner. The final date would be calculated
according to the number of free IPv4 blocks in the IANA pool. This date
would be established as two years as of the date the pool of free blocks
reaches 30 /8s. 
 
The intention of the proposal is to allow ISPs to have a plan for migrating
to IPv6 as, once the final date is established, ISPs will know without any
doubt the deadline as of which it will not be possible to receive IPv4
allocations.
 
During the session other ways of dealing with the problem were suggested
that did not imply the use of an artificial exhaustion date. Concern was
expressed that this proposal would not benefit small regions such as LACNIC
and AFRINIC because it would stimulate a demand for IPv4 blocks, increasing
even further the consumption rate in the more developed regions. In the
meantime LACNIC would continue to allocate from its own space already in
use, and it is highly probable that when the final date arrived LACNIC's
pool would be exhausted or almost exhausted. This would represent a
situation of inequitableness among the different regions.
 
After comments were posted, the person who had made the proposal decided not
to seek consensus for the policy as originally presented.
 
End of report. No further comments have arrived so far.

-- 
German Valdez
LACNIC