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                        Dear SIG members,
The proposal, 'Removal of IPv4 prefix exchange policy', has been sent to
the Policy SIG for review. It will be presented at the Policy SIG at
APNIC 29 in Kuala Lumpur, 1-5 March 2010.
We invite you to review and comment on the proposal on the mailing list
before the meeting.
The comment period on the mailing list before an APNIC meeting is an
important part of the policy development process. We encourage you to
express your views on the proposal:
- Do you support or oppose this proposal?
      - Does this proposal solve a problem you are experiencing? If
        so, tell the community about your situation.
      - Do you see any disadvantages in this proposal?
      - Is there anything in the proposal that is not clear?
      - What changes could be made to this proposal to make it more
        effective?
Information about this and other policy proposals is available from:
http://www.apnic.net/policy/proposals
Randy, Ching-Heng, and Terence
________________________________________________________________________
prop-080-v001: Removal of IPv4 prefix exchange policy
________________________________________________________________________
Authors:   Guangliang Pan gpan@apnic.net
Version:   1
Date:      29 January 2010
1.  Introduction
----------------
This is a proposal to remove the policy that currently permits resource
holders to return three or more noncontiguous IPv4 address blocks and
have the prefixes replaced with a single, larger, contiguous block.
2.  Summary of current problem
------------------------------
Current APNIC policy[1] permits organizations to exchange three or more
IPv4 prefixes and receive a single portable CIDR range of equal length
or one bit shorter.
Such exchanges may be requested without the requirement to document the
efficiency of existing assignments and the usage rates.
At the time this policy was introduced, it served a good purpose: it
aimed to encourage return of noncontiguous small historical blocks to
help reduce the size of the global routing table.
However, as the remaining unallocated IPv4 addresses continue to be
depleted, it will become increasingly difficult for APNIC to fulfil
requests made under this prefix exchange policy.
3.  Situation in other RIRs
---------------------------
ARIN has two policies related to exchanging noncontiguous prefixes. For
more information, see section 4.6, "Amnesty and Aggregation Requests"
and section 4.7, "Aggregation Requests" in the ARIN Number Resource
Policy Manual at:
https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html
AfriNIC, LACNIC and RIPE have no similar prefix exchange policies.
4.  Details of the proposal
---------------------------
It is proposed that APNIC remove the policy that enables networks to
exchange noncontiguous address blocks in exchange for a single,
aggregated range.
5.  Advantages and disadvantages of the proposal
------------------------------------------------
5.1 Advantages
- It removes a policy responsibility that APNIC will not able to
       fulfil during the IPv4 exhaustion period.
- It prevents organizations taking advantage of the exchange policy
       to obtain more IPv4 addresses from APNIC by rounding up to the
       next bit without justification of the need.
This is of particular concern as the remaining unallocated IPv4
       pool becomes smaller.
5.2 Disadvantages
- It prevents organizations willing to renumber and aggregate
       address blocks from being able to do so. However, given the
       fragmentation of the global routing table for other reasons during
       the IPv4 address exhaustion period, this is a minor disadvantage,
       that will have very little adverse impact on the size of the
       global routing table.
6.  Effect on APNIC members
---------------------------
This proposal will prevent APNIC members from exchanging noncontiguous
prefixes for a single prefix. However, as noted in the "Disadvantages"
section above, this inability to aggregate routes is not likely to have
a significant impact on the size of the global routing table during the
IPv4 address exhaustion period.
7.  Effect on NIRs
------------------
NIR members will also be prevented from exchanging noncontiguous
prefixes for a single prefix.
8.   References
---------------
[1] See:
Section 11.4, "Renumbering to promote aggregation" in "Policies
        for IPv4 address space management in the Asia Pacific region",
        http://www.apnic.net/policy/add-manage-policy
Section 7, "Historical prefix exchange policy" in "Policies for
        historical Internet resources in the APNIC Whois Database",
        http://www.apnic.net/policy/historical-resource-policies

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