What if the payment status is in dispute? There are likely other scenarios that haven’t been considered. My point is not to claim that the current process is unacceptable. My point is that in order to consider whether or not this proposal has unintended consequences, we need a clear statement from staff how ROAs would be treated with this policy in place in these various situations to conduct a useful evaluation of the consequences in question. I agree that these are operational matters, but they are operational matters that affect the outcome of this policy in a very real and potent way that is unique to this particular policy. Most policies do not enable staff actions that can disrupt routing. This one potentially does. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I am saying that the community as a whole should get the information from staff about the implementation details and then evaluate those impacts very carefully before passing judgment on the policy proposal.
I don’t know for sure whether that is good or bad and really, mine is not the most important judgment on that question anyway. However, I will say that I think the community should consider that question very carefully before moving this policy forward.
Until now the system has functioned with the RIRs operating as registries for uniqueness and cooperating ISPs enforcing that uniqueness to the extent it gets enforced (which is admittedly rather lax). There are many options for tightening that up, but in the current situation, it has the ISPs acting as a check and balance against the RIRs acting contrary to the interests of the community. While I’m not saying that the RIRs are evil or would necessarily do so, I am saying that institutions with unchecked power are not historically known for remaining good very long after the checks and balances on their power are removed. This policy proposal potentially significantly erodes part of those checks and balances by moving part of the decision on honoring advertisements of expired resources out of the hands of some ISPs and into the hands of the RIRs.
Owen
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