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Global Policy Proposal for Remaining IPv4 Address Space – Background Report

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Updated 2 December 2008
8 September 2008
11 July 2008
5 March 2008
10 January 2008

Introduction

Global Internet Number Resource Policies are defined by the ASO MOU - between ICANN and the NRO - as "Internet number resource policies that have the agreement of all RIRs according to their policy development processes and ICANN, and require specific actions or outcomes on the part of IANA or any other external ICANN-related body in order to be implemented". Attachment A of this MOU describes the Development Process of Global Internet Number Resource Policies, including the adoption by every RIR of a global policy to be forwarded to the ICANN Board by the ASO, as well as its ratification by the ICANN Board. In this context, the ICANN Board adopted its own Procedures for the Review of Internet Number Resource Policies Forwarded by the ASO for Ratification.

Among other features, these Procedures state that the Board will decide, as and when appropriate, that ICANN staff should follow the development of a particular global policy, undertaking an "early awareness" tracking of proposals in the addressing community. To this end, staff should issue background reports periodically, forwarded to the Board, to all ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees and posted at the ICANN Web site.

At its meeting on 20 November 2007, the Board resolved to request tracking of the development of a global policy proposal for allocation of remaining IPv4 address space, under discussion in the Regional Internet Registries. The status overview presented below is compiled in response to this request and will be further updated as developments proceed, for information to ICANN entities and the wider community. This is the fifth issue of the tracking of this policy.

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. The proposals were discussed in parallel in the RIRs and regarded essentially as one proposal, with a view to converging on a value for N. In February 2008, agreement was 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

The proposal was introduced at the subsequent meetings of all other RIRs. It has now been adopted in ARIN, AfriNIC, LACNIC, RIPE and APNIC. The proposal will next be handled by the NRO EC and the ASO AC according to their procedures before being submitted to the ICANN Board for ratification. The table below outlines the steps taken within each RIR for the current proposal. 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

RIR

AfriNIC

APNIC

ARIN

LACNIC

RIPE

Proposal Introduced

16 Feb 2008 afpol-v4gp200802 (3)

23 Jan 2008 prop-055-v002 (3)

8 Feb 2008

prop 2007-23 (revised) (3)

21 Feb2008

LAC-2008-01 (3)

3 March 2008

prop 2008-03 (3)

Discussion list

Resource Policy Disc. List

SIG-Policy

Public Policy Mailing List

Politicas – Policy Mailing List

Address Policy WG

Public Forum

AfriNIC 8

24 May - 6 June 2008

(consensus)

APNIC 26 25 - 29 Aug2008

- Slides (3)

(consensus)

ARIN XXI

6 - 9 April 2008

- Slides (3)

LACNIC XI 26– 30 May 2008

- Slides (3)

(consensus)

RIPE 56

5 – 9 May 2008

- Slides (3)

Final Call for Comments

23 June - 8 July 2008

28 Aug - 24 Oct 2008

14 – 29 April 2008

13 June – 28 July 2008

22 July - 19 August 2008

Next Public Forum

AfriNIC 9

22 – 28 Nov 2008

APNIC 27 18 -27 Feb 2009

ARIN XXII

15 – 17 Oct 2008

LACNIC XII

25 - 29 May 2009

RIPE 57

26 – 30 Oct 2008

Adoption

AfriNIC Board, 13 August 2008

APNIC EC, 20 November 2008

ARIN Board, 24 June 2008

LACNIC Board, 5 August 2008

Adopted on 8 Sept 2008

Link to document

afpol-v4gp200802 (3)

Proposal-055-v002 (3)

Policy prop

2007-23 revised (3)

LAC-2008-01 (3)

 

RIPE-436 (3)

 

Link to Policy Development Process

Policy Development Process

Policy Development Process

Internet Resource Policy Evaluation

Process

Policy Development Process

Policy Development Process

Status

(3) adopted

(3) adopted concluded, awaiting adoption

(3) adopted

(3) adopted

(3) adopted

History - previous proposals (1) and (2)

RIR

AfriNIC

APNIC

ARIN

LACNIC

RIPE

Proposal Introduced

9 July 2007

afpol-v4gp200707 (1)

29 Aug 2007 afpol-v4ep200708 (2)

26 July 2007

prop-051-v001 (1)

8 August 2007 prop-046-v002 (2)

28 Aug 2007 prop 2007-18 (1)

28 Aug 2007 prop 2007-23 (2)

23 April 2007

LAC-2007-07 (1)

30 July 2007 prop 2007-06 (1)

15 Oct 2007

prop 2007-07 (2)

Public Forum

AfriNIC 7

23 - 28 Sept 2007

- Slides (1)

- Slides (2)

APNIC 24 29 Aug – 7 Sept 2007

- Slides (1)

- Slides(2)

ARIN XX

17-19 Oct 2007

- Slides (1)

- Slides (2)

LACNIC X 22-25 May 2007

- Slides (1)

 

RIPE 55

22 - 26 Oct 2007

- Podcast (1+2)

 

Final Call for Comments

2 Oct - 17 Oct 2007

 

 

13 June - 28 July 2007

 

RIR Board Endorsement

 

 

 

(1) Ratified by LACNIC Board on 5 Dec 2007,

 

Links to documents

afpol-v4gp200707 (1)

afpol-v4ep200708 (2)

Proposal-051-v001 (1)

 

Proposal-046-v002 (2)

Policy proposal 2007-18 (1)

 

2007-23 (2)

- English (1)

- Spanish (1)

- Portuguese (1)

Policy proposal 2007-06 (1)

 

2007-07 (2)

Link to Policy Development Process

Policy Development Process

Policy Development Process

Internet Resource Policy Evaluation

Process

Policy Development Process

Policy Development Process

Status

(1,2) withdrawn

(1,2) withdrawn

(1,2) withdrawn

(1,2) withdrawn

(1,2) withdrawn

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."