As a member of the ARIN Advisory Council (AC), I have to stay up to date on all of the goings on in the world of ARIN policy development (that’s kind of the point of the AC). These policy changes affect many people but are fairly hard to keep track of for most (most engineers find the process boring, political, time-consuming, or all of the above plus worse). So, to help bridge this gap, I am going to start doing semi-regular updates from the ARIN policy process here on dp. My idea (as of now) is to create a kind of template update in this post and then re-use that whenever there are updates to be shared. This will typically be just before and after a Public Policy Meeting (PPM) and whenever any major action is taken by the Board of Trustees (BoT). Expect 4-6 a year.

Today’s update is spurred by a BoT action; several policies have been adopted!

Adopted:

On 16 December 2011 the ARIN Board of Trustees adopted the following policies:

ARIN-2011-8: Combined M&A and Specified Transfers

• In section 8.2, change “… ARIN will work with the resource holder(s) to return, aggregate, or reclaim resources as appropriate via the processes outlined in current ARIN policy (for example, sections 4.6, 4.7, or 12 of the NRPM).” to “…ARIN will work with the resource holder(s) to return, aggregate, transfer, or reclaim resources as needed to restore compliance via the processes outlined in current ARIN policy.”

ARIN-2011-9 (Global Proposal): Global Policy for post exhaustion IPv4 allocation mechanisms by the IANA

• All space at IANA becomes the “Recovered IPv4 Pool”
• Each RIR gets one “allocation unit” every six months
  • IPv4 allocation unit = 1/5 of Recovered IPv4 pool, rounded down to the next CIDR (power-of-2) boundary.
  • The minimum “IPv4 allocation unit” size will be a /24.

ARIN-2011-10: Remove Single Aggregate requirement from Specified Transfer

• In section 8.3, change “can demonstrate the need for such resources, as a single aggregate, in the exact amount which they can justify under current ARIN policies” to “can demonstrate the need for such resources in the amount which they can justify under current ARIN policies”

2011-8 and 2011-10 will be implemented no later than 29 February 2012.

2011-9 is a global proposal and as such awaits the conclusion of the Global Policy Development Process.

Not Adopted:

ARIN-2011-1: ARIN Inter-RIR Transfers

At this time the Board has not adopted 2011-1: Inter-RIR transfers. As stated in the minutes, “The ARIN Board of Trustees takes the recommendation of Draft Policy ARIN-2011-1: Inter-RIR Transfers formally under advisement pending a final community discussion at the ARIN XXIX Public Policy Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Furthermore, the Board of Trustees directs the President immediately start implementation of this policy in parallel, with final policy availability held until otherwise directed by the Board.” See the minutes for more information on this item.

Find the Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes at: https://www.arin.net/about_us/bot/index.html

Draft Policy:

ARIN-2011-5: Shared Transition Space for IPv4 Address Extension

• Reserves a /10 for Service Providers to use for inside addressing in a CGN deployment
• Recommended to the Board for Adoption (May 2011)
• Waiting on IETF action (two active I-Ds)
  • IANA Reserved IPv4 Prefix for Shared CGN Space (draft-weil-shared-transition-space-request)
  • ARIN Draft Policy 2011-5: Shared Transition Space (draft-bdgks-arin-shared-transition-space)

ARIN-2011-7: Compliance Requirement

• Strengthens ARINs ability to enforce compliance with addressing policy, particularly WHOIS information requirements

ARIN-2011-11: Clarify Justified Need for Transfers

• Add to Section 8.3: “…they can justify under current ARIN policies showing how the addresses will be utilized within 12 months.”
• Remove from 4.2.4.4: “This reduction does not apply to resources received via section 8.3. An organization receiving a transfer under section 8.3 may continue to request up to a 12-month supply of IP addresses.”

ARIN-2011-12: Set Transfer Need to 24 months

• In ARIN-2011-11, change “…will be utilized within 12 months.” to “…will be utilized within 24 months.”

Policy Proposals:

ARIN-prop-151 Limiting needs requirements for IPv4 Transfers

ARIN-prop-157 Section 8.3 Simplification

ARIN-prop-159 IPv6 Subsequent Allocations Utilization Requirement

ARIN-prop-160 Clarification of Section 4.2.3.4.1. Utilization

Misc:

Well, that’s the basic template (and the current update).

Note that there is no summary given for the policy proposals, this is because many proposals die soon after being proposed and all policies must move to “draft” before they can be adopted (so I’m focusing on Drafts).

Let me know what you think!

For more on what all this means and how it happens, find the ARIN Policy Development Process at: https://www.arin.net/policy/pdp.html