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Introduction

The development of Global Internet Number Resource Policies is the subject of an MoU between ASO/NRO and ICANN. There are also specific ICANN Board Procedures for handling global policy proposals in this context.

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 20 November 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.

Status Overview

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 19 and 20 February 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

Although no consensus on the new proposal (3) was reached at APNIC 25, the authors will introduce the proposal for discussions in the next meetings of the other RIRs. 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.

The table below indicates the status within each RIR for the current proposal for remaining IPv4 address space. Hyperlinks are included for easy access. An additional table shows the history of previous proposals.

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, i.e. focusing on address allocation from IANA to the RIRs, and recognized by the ASO AC as global policy proposals in that meaning.

Status of current proposal (3) - for previous proposal history see separate table. 

History - previous proposals (1) and (2)

This file last modified 06-Mar-2008

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