Policy Proposal 2008-3 - Staff Assessment

[Member Services]

Policy Proposal 2008-3
Title: Community Networks IPv6 Allocation
Proposal Submitted: March 4, 2008
Date of Assessment: March 27, 2008


ARIN Staff Assessment

The assessment of this proposal includes comments from ARIN staff and
the ARIN General Counsel. It contains analysis of procedural, legal, and
resource concerns regarding the implementation of this policy proposal
as it is currently stated. Any changes to the language of the proposal
may necessitate further analysis by staff and Counsel.

I.      Proposal

Policy Proposal is available as Annex A below and at:
http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2008_3.html	

II.     Understanding of the proposal

ARIN staff understands this policy would provide IPv6 addresses to any
organization considered to be a community network.

III. Issues and concerns

A. ARIN Staff Comments

This proposal defines a “community network” which is a new term in the
ARIN region.  The community should take a close look at this definition
to explore whether its rather broad definition might make it subject to
abuse or exploitation by people who may not otherwise qualify for IPv6
address space.

This proposal does not state a minimum number of actual or planned
customers for the community network.  Staff recommends that a minimum
number of customers be specified to help determine qualification.

There is no minimum allocation size specified in this policy.  Staff
recommends that a minimum allocation size be specified.

In addition, staff recommends that criteria for requests larger than the
minimum allocation size and for requests for additional allocations be
specified.

Staff believes that a community network does not fit either LIR or
end-user descriptions exactly and therefore recommends that this policy
be inserted into NRPM as section 6.5.9

B. ARIN General Counsel

Counsel sees no significant legal or litigation risk regarding this policy.

IV. Resource Impact - Moderate

The resource impact of implementing this policy is moderate.  Barring
any unforeseen resource requirements, this policy could be implemented
within 90 days from the date of the ratification of the policy by the
ARIN Board of Trustees.  It will require the following:

- New template
- Registration software changes
- New set of guidelines
- Staff training

Respectfully submitted,

Member Services
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)


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Annex A

Policy Proposal 2008-3
Community Networks IPv6 Allocation

Author: Joshua King

Proposal Version: 1

Date: 4 March 2008

Proposal type: new

Policy term: permanent

Policy statement:

[Add Section 2.8 to the NRPM.]

2.8 Community Network

A community network is a generic reference to any network that is
operated by a group of people living in a particular local area
organized for the purposes of delivery or provision of network services
to the residents of an incorporated or unincorporated regional
municipality, city, town, village, rural municipality, township, county,
district or other municipality or other such geographic space, however
designated.

[Modify 6.5.8.1b as follows.]

b. qualify for an IPv4 assignment or allocation from ARIN under the IPv4
policy currently in effect or be a Community Network as defined in
Section 2.8.

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.