Global Policy Proposal for Remaining IPv4 Address Space Updated

MARINA DEL REY, CA - The development of Global Internet Number Resource Policies is the subject of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between ASO/NRO and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

There are also specific ICANN Board Procedures for handling global policy proposals in this context, according to the Corporation.

The Board procedures also state that the Board can request ICANN staff to undertake an "early awareness" tracking of proposals for global policies under development in the addressing community.

At its meeting on November 20, 2007, the Board resolved to request such tracking of the development of a global policy proposal for allocation of remaining IPv4 address space, currently being discussed in the Regional Internet Registries, or RIRs.

The status overview presented below is compiled in response to this request and will be timely updated as developments proceed, for information to ICANN entities and the wider community.

Originally, two slightly different global policy proposals were introduced for allocation of the remaining IPv4 address space:

• A version (1) "Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space", first presented at LACNIC X in May 2007.
• A version (2) "End Policy for IANA IPv4 allocations to RIRs", first presented at APNIC 24 in September 2007.

Both featured the same approach, distribution of an equal number N of /8 IPv4 address blocks to each RIR when the IANA free pool would reach the threshold value of 5xN, but differed in the proposed value of N, notably 2 or 1, respectively (although with N = 5 in the very first version). Due to their simil arity, (1) and (2) were discussed in parallel in the RIRs and regarded essentially as one proposal, with a view to converging on a value for N.

On February 19-20, 2008, the authors of (1) and (2) withdrew their respective proposals, as agreement had been reached for a unified proposal (3). The current proposal is thus:

• Version (3) "Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space", first presented at APNIC 25 in February 2008.

Since the launch of the new proposal (3) at APNIC 25, the authors have introduced the proposal for discussion at the subsequent meetings of all other RIRs.

The proposal has now been adopted in ARIN and reached consensus in AfriNIC and LACNIC.

If adopted by all the RIRs, the proposal will subsequently be handled by the NRO EC and the ASO AC according to their procedures before being submitted to the ICANN Board for ratification.

It should be noted that other policy proposals have been put forward and are being discussed regarding IPv4 address space exhaustion, although only those mentioned above have been scoped as global policy proposals in the sense of the ASO MoU.