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Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space | (ratified by ICANN Board on 6 March 2009)

This policy describes the process for the allocation of the remaining IPv4 space from IANA to the RIRs. When a minimum amount of available space is reached, one /8 will be allocated from IANA to each RIR, replacing the current IPv4 allocation policy.

In order to fulfill the requirements of this policy, at the time it is adopted, one /8 will be reserved by IANA for each RIR. The reserved allocation units will no longer be part of the available space at the IANA pool. IANA will also reserve one /8 to any new RIR at the time it is recognized.

The process for the allocation of the remaining IPv4 space is divided in two consecutive phases:

1. Existing Policy Phase

During this phase IANA will continue allocating IPv4 addresses to the RIRs using the existing allocation policy. This phase will continue until a request for IPv4 address space from any RIR to IANA either cannot be fulfilled with the remaining IPv4 space available at the IANA pool or can be fulfilled but leaving the IANA remaining IPv4 pool empty.

This will be the last IPv4 address space request that IANA will accept from any RIR. At this point the next phase of the process (Exhaustion Phase) will be initiated.

2. Exhaustion Phase

During this phase IANA will automatically allocate the reserved IPv4 allocation units to each RIR (one /8 to each one) and respond to the last request with the remaining available allocation units at the IANA pool (M units).

2.1 Size of the final IPv4 allocations

In this phase IANA will automatically allocate one /8 to each RIR from the reserved space as defined in this policy. IANA will also allocate M allocation units to the RIR that submitted the last request for IPv4 addresses.

2.2 Allocation of the remaining IPv4 Address space

After the completion of the evaluation of the final request for IPv4 addresses, IANA MUST:

  1. Immediately notify the NRO about the activation of the second phase (Exhaustion Phase) of this policy.
  2. Proceed to allocate M allocation units to the RIR that submitted the last request for IPv4 address space.
  3. Proceed to allocate one /8 to each RIR from the reserved space.
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."