[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2024-7: Addition of Definitions for General and Special Purpose IP Addresses

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 11:31 AM ARIN <info at arin.net> wrote:
> Policy Statement:
>
> Add the following definitions to Section 2
>
> Special Purpose IPv4 Address - An IPv4 address that the NRPM makes available for specific purposes including maintaining critical Internet infrastructure (Section 4.4), facilitating IPv6 deployment (Section 4.10), or temporarily for experimental purposes as approved by ARIN (Section 11).
>
> General Purpose IPv4 Address - Any IPv4 address issued by ARIN that is not issued solely for the purposes stated under Special Purpose IPv4 Addresses.
>
> Special Purpose IPv6 Address - An IPv6 address that the NRPM makes available for specific purposes such as maintaining critical Internet infrastructure (Section 6.10) or temporarily for experimental purposes as approved by ARIN (Section 11).
>
> General Purpose IPv6 Address - Any IPv6 address issued by ARIN that is not issued solely for the purposes stated under Special Purpose IPv6 Addresses

I like your idea but this could use some wordsmithing.

For one thing, ARIN doesn't deal in individual IP addresses, they deal
in allocations.

For another, the special/general concept has the same meaning in IPv4
and IPv6 so breaking them out separately seems awkward.

And finally, it doesn't entirely address your original point, which is
that efficient utilization of special purpose addresses is evaluated
differently and separately from general purpose addresses.

I tried to capture the points in your problem statement with this rough rewrite:

Special Purpose Allocation: IPv4 or IPv6 addresses which the
registrant is permitted to use for a specific purpose. A registrant is
out of compliance with ARIN policy if they employ special purpose
addresses in a manner other than the one for which they were
allocated.

General Purpose Allocation: IPv4 or IPv6 addresses which the
registrant may use at their discretion. Any allocation which is not
for a special-purpose is a general purpose allocation. Compliant use
of special purpose addresses shall not impact the efficient-use
evaluation of a registrant's general purpose allocations.


The specific sections like 4.4 and 4.10 should then explicitly say
that they are special purpose allocations rather than trying to
forward-reference them from the definition.

> Note that this proposal only adds definitions and does not change any of the existing text; I figured it’d be better to leave any use of the definitions to a future policy proposal.

Acknowledged.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



--
William Herrin
bill at herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/