[ppml] Policy Proposal 2006-5: IPv4 Micro-allocations for anycast services (temporary) - Abandoned

[Member Services]

The ARIN Advisory Council (AC), acting under the provisions of the ARIN 
Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process (IRPEP), has reviewed policy 
proposal 2006-5: IPv4 Micro-allocations for anycast services 
(temporary). It has determined that there is no community consensus in 
favor of the proposal and should thus be abandoned. The AC made this 
determination at their meeting at the conclusion of the ARIN Public 
Policy meeting on April 11, 2006. The results of the AC meeting were 
reported by the Chair of the AC at the member meeting. This report can 
be found at http://www.arin.net/meetings/minutes/ARIN_XVII/mem.html

In order for this proposal to be further considered the author must use 
the last call petition process as defined in the ARIN Internet Resource 
Policy Evaluation Process. This policy will be considered to be 
abandoned if the author of the proposal does not initiate a last call 
petition by 12:00 Noon, Eastern Time, April 21, 2006.

The current policy proposal text is provided below and is also available 
http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2006_5.html

The ARIN Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process can be found at 
http://www.arin.net/policy/irpep.html.

Regards,

Member Services
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)


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Policy Proposal 2006-5: IPv4 Micro-allocations for anycast services 
(temporary)

Policy statement

Proposal type: new

Policy term: temporary

Policy statement:

In the NRPM IPv4 section, renumber 4.4 to 4.4.1, and add:

4.4.2 Micro-allocations for anycast services - ARIN will make 
micro-allocations to organizations wishing to deploy anycast based 
services, provided they meet the following criteria:

    * All of the criteria normally required to receive IPv4 space, AND
    * The organization must have multiple (at least two) discrete 
multi-homed networks.
    * The organization must advertise directly allocated networks from 
each multi-homed site.

Micro-allocations for anycast services will be no longer than a /24. 
These allocations will be made out of blocks reserved for 
micro-allocation purposes. ISPs and other organizations receiving these 
micro-allocations will be charged under the ISP fee schedule, while 
end-users will be charged under the fee schedule for end-users.

This policy is experimental, and is limited to 16 allocations and two 
years from adoption. In addition, organizations may receive no more than 
one microallocation under this policy.

Policy Rationale

There are an increasing number of anycast-based applications being 
offered by service providers and other organizations. Indeed, many basic 
infrastructure services (like the DNS root servers) are already anycast 
based. (See RFC 1546 for an authoritative discussion of anycast services.)

It's worth noting that IPv6 has anycast built into the protocol itself. 
This is a sign that there is significant community interest in anycast 
as a technology, and highlights the lack of IPv4 allocation policy for 
anycast.

Deployment of new services is severely hampered by current IPv4 
allocation policies. For organizations that do not have legacy IP space, 
justifying a /22 to serve a handful of addresses is effectively 
impossible. As many ISPs also filter routes longer than /22, it is 
impractical to use a longer mask for any netblock that is utilized for 
an anycast service. This situation is also generally unfavorable to 
younger organizations, while giving older organizations that do have a 
surplus of legacy space a competitive advantage.

In light of this, some organizations may simply lie about their 
addressing needs in order to convince an RIR or LIR that a /22 is 
required, when a much smaller network would suffice. This is not a 
behavior that should be encouraged by policy.

The obvious answer is that a micro-allocation scheme needs to be created 
to allow organizations deploying anycast services to acquire a network 
of more appropriate size.

It is also clear that a micro-allocation policy that makes it easier for 
organizations to acquire small netblocks may lead to additional improper 
allocations to organizations that simply wish to acquire additional 
small blocks of space. This policy proposal attempts to address that by 
requiring more stringent requirements for such allocations.

A previous policy proposal (2005-6) is similar to this proposal, but 
with a few significant changes. There was significant negative feedback 
to that policy based on a couple of key difficulties, which this 
proposal attempts to address.

The primary difficulty is that an anycast network looks much like a 
normal multihomed network from the outside. This led to the consensus 
belief that the earlier policy proposal would be abused by organizations 
that wouldn't otherwise qualify for address space. This proposal further 
restricts allocations such that only organizations that are already 
demonstratably multihomed with direct allocations can possibly qualify. 
Such organizations will typically have little use for a small allocation 
unless they really intend to use it for a specific purpose.

In addition, this policy is marked as experimental and has a sunset 
clause, which will definitively prevent widespread abuse. It is hoped 
that operational experience will show that this policy is not seeing 
abuse, and it can later be modified to be permanent. In the event that 
this policy is widely abused, the total damage is limited and will be 
fixed in a relatively short time span.