[arin-ppml] Policies 2010-12 and 2010-9

[George, Wes E IV [NTK]]

Since these two policies are covering overlapping ground, I'm responding to them together. I generally support the concept behind both policies of providing the flexibility to get additional IPv6 allocations for justifiable implementations, but I would prefer a more generalized policy change for any appropriate transition technology (like -12) than I would something specific to 6RD (like -9).

Therefore, I support 2010-12 and I do not support 2010-9 as a standalone policy.

However, I think that the staff concerns raised in 2010-12 are valid as they regard definition of valid transition technologies that can be used as justification, rather than simply leaving it open-ended. There are probably a couple of ways to provide additional guidance to ARIN staff, either through updates to the policy proposal itself or via AC feedback to ARIN staff
1) by specifically referencing the appropriate IETF RFCs (or drafts?) that are considered transition technologies along with a brief explanation of why they may require additional allocations of IPv6 space to implement, and what questions/plans ARIN staff should request when validating a submission. This would require continuing to update the policy to incorporate additional technologies as they come about.
The problem with this would be the fact that people often implement things like this while they are still in draft form in the IETF, and the PDP may not be responsive enough to make changes as rapidly as required. It's possible that some of these uses could be treated as Section 11 Experimental and just allocate the blocks in such a way that they can be converted to normal allocations without return/renumbering once the policy is updated to cover the appropriate transition technology. Alternatively, the policy could provide a way to get provisional approval for technologies not explicitly defined in the current policy, perhaps by coupling the request for address space with a policy proposal submitted by the requestor to cover their particular use. This would provide incentive to participate in the PDP, and also ensure that any of the provisional (eg not explicitly covered by current policy) technologies are in front of the community for input as soon as is possible.
2) Formalize a method to provide direct consultation to ARIN staff on technical matters that are not explicitly covered in the NRPM, either via the AC or the community. There are other threads now talking about small expert review panels (proposal 116) to provide technical guidance to ARIN staff, which I think is probably not the right way to go, but I do think that there may be a need for this type of guidance outside of a formal policy change. If the concern is that ARIN staff is not equipped to make decisions on certain technical matters without additional guidance, either the AC could weigh in, or it could be pushed to one of the discussion lists for community input (perhaps ARIN-consult?). I would think that the number of exceptions that would require this additional guidance could be limited so that it doesn't represent a drain on the resources involved nor an unacceptable delay in processing new requests for address space.

There are those who would say, IPv6 address space is virtually limitless, why are we so worried about a couple of additional /32 allocations? That may be a fair point, but I personally think it's worth ensuring that we expect proper justification for allocations to strike that balance between being stingy with a freely-available resource and being wasteful.

Wes George

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