September, 2003 Bill Woodcock Packet Clearing House Harmonization of Regional Internet Registry Resource Allocation Policies September, 2003 Bill Woodcock Packet Clearing House

Five Regional Registries RIPE Europe ARIN North America APNIC Asia-Pacific LACNIC Latin America & Caribbean AfriNIC Africa & Indian Ocean

Registry Responsibilities IP Address allocation and management ASN allocation and management in-addr DNS delegation Registration database maintenance whois service Training and outreach

Forces for Divergence Each region has a distinct constituency. Each constituency has unique requirements. Each RIR must be free to develop policy different from that of the others.

Forces for Convergence Some practices differ in scale, but not in mechanism. Some services differ in price, but not in effect. LACNIC has had success with adopting the full suite of ARIN policies as a starting-point. Each RIR should be able to learn from the experiences of the others.

Harmonization Areas of interest Policy Comparison Document 2.0 IP Address allocation ASN allocation Policy Comparison Document 2.0 The Internet community is the ultimate authority, so all policies must originate from the community, not the RIR staff.

Major Policy Differences National Internet Registries APNIC has NIRs in Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Vietnam. LACNIC has NIRs in Brazil and Mexico. RIPE and ARIN do not have NIR policies.

Major Policy Differences Direct assignments APNIC and RIPE perform direct assignments of any size, while LACNIC requires recipients to justify a /21, and ARIN requires recipients to justify a /20.

Major Policy Differences Critical Infrastructure RIPE has no separate policy for critical infrastructure. ARIN and LACNIC include IXes in critical infrastructure. APNIC has separate policies for IXes and critical infrastructure.

Major Policy Differences Internet Exchanges RIPE has no specific policy for IXes. ARIN requires two initial participants, and APNIC requires three. LACNIC’s policy is less specific.

Major Policy Differences LIR “Assignment window” RIPE, APNIC, and LACNIC limit the size of block which allocation recipients can assign without prior approval from the RIR. ARIN does not.

Major Policy Differences IPv6 Critical Infrastructure LACNIC and ARIN have a minimum assignment of /48, while APNIC’s minimum is /32, and RIPE does not distinguish critical infrastructure from normal assignments. As with IPv4, APNIC has separate IX policy.

Major Policy Differences ASN allocations APNIC allocates blocks of ASNs to their NIRs, while ARIN, LACNIC, and RIPE perform direct assignment only.

Major Policy Differences ASN assignments APNIC has portable and non-portable ASNs. RIPE doesn’t require a continuing relationship with ASN recipients. ARIN and LACNIC have both mandatory one-time fees and recurring fees.

Bill Woodcock woody@pch.net http://www.apnic.net/docs/policy/rir-comparison.html http://www.pch.net/resources/ Produced with the generous support of the ICANN Training and Outreach Programme