[ppml] Policy Proposal: Community Networks IPv6 Allocation

[Member Services]

ARIN received the following policy proposal. In accordance with the ARIN
Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process, the proposal is being
posted to the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List (PPML) and being placed on
ARIN's website.

The ARIN Advisory Council (AC) will review this proposal at their next
regularly scheduled meeting. The AC may decide to:

   1. Accept the proposal as written. If the AC accepts the proposal, it
will be posted as a formal policy proposal to PPML and it will be
presented at a Public Policy Meeting.

   2. Not accept the proposal. If the AC does not accept the proposal,
the AC will explain their decision via the PPML. If a proposal is not
accepted, then the author may elect to use the petition process to
advance their proposal. If the author elects not to petition or the
petition fails, then the proposal will be closed.

The AC shepherds for this proposal are Lea Roberts and Stacy Taylor.

The AC invites everyone to comment on this proposal on the PPML,
particularly their support or non-support and the reasoning behind their
opinion. Such participation contributes to a thorough vetting and
provides important guidance to the AC in their deliberations.

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

Mailing list subscription information can be found at:
http://www.arin.net/mailing_lists/

Regards,

Member Services
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)


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Policy Proposal Name: Community Networks IPv6 Allocation

Author: Joshua King

Proposal Version:1.0

Submission Date:February 7th, 2008

Proposal type:new

Policy term:permanent

Policy statement:

Under this policy, ARIN would adopt a new IPv6 address allocation policy
that allows community networking projects to acquire space in a
straightforward and affordable manner. The policy will establish an
allocation template modeled on the experimental allocation template,
with all applicable ARIN fees aimed at affordability (for instance,
totaling not more than $500 USD). The aim is to prevent this policy from
becoming a less-expensive option for for-profit ISPs, and tailor it to
address the concerns of the kinds of organizations that run these
projects. Organizations would have the option of either acquiring blocks
for their own use, or distributing address space to other community
networks that are unable to deal with the administrative and technical
overhead of address management. A community network prefix would need to
be established, providing a subnet of sufficient size to serve such
projects for the foreseeable future. Block sizes of /48 and larger would
be available on the basis of a justification of project goals, with an
eye towards:
           1. Use by non-profit organizations.
           2. Projects aimed at low-income users.
           3. Open-source software development.

Rationale:

There are currently a number of projects globally that aim to develop
community network infrastructure and related technologies. These are
usually coordinated by volunteer-run, grassroots organizations which
lack many of the resources of traditional internet service providers and
other network operators. They have diverse goals, including public
policy, software development, and implementation of community services
and resources. Many of them provide services free of charge, and thus
lack any paying user base. However, in order to create and maintain
community networks that are often composed of hundreds if not thousands
of inexpensive, commodity hosts and devices, a significant amount of
address space will be required. Current-generation workarounds to this
problem, such as NAT, not only make it difficult to develop
next-generation decentralized network technology by segmenting the
community's architecture from the Internet as a whole, but will cease to
be as viable a stopgap as the Internet moves towards IPv6 integration.

Even now, common community networking software solutions such as
CUWiNware (http://www.cuwin.net) and Freifunk (http://www.freifunk.at)
have nascent IPv6 addressing support, but participating organizations
lack the address space for widespread testing or adoption. As such, it
is necessary to implement an procedure as soon as possible for these
segregated networks to acquire address space. These organizations do not
meet the criteria traditionally defined for LIR's, and thus cannot
acquire address allocations through existing templates. By establishing
a procedure by which these organizations can seek to acquire the
resources they require for further development, ARIN can reach out to
this active community and establish a small but definite space for them
in the future of Internet.

Timetable for implementation: Immediate.