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

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

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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

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

14. 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.

15. Bill Woodcock woody@pch.net
Produced with the generous support of the
ICANN Training and Outreach Programme