Eleven Policy Proposals to Discuss in Panama

27/03/2018

The eleven policy proposals that will be discussed on Tuesday 1st May at the Public Policy Forum to be held during LACNIC 29 include creating a Global Internet Registry (GIR), enabling IPv4 packet transfers from other registries to LACNIC, modifying the policy development process, and implementing actions that allow IP-based geolocation.

All the proposals are currently under discussion on the policy mailing list and will be subject to further analysis to determine whether they reach consensus during the LACNIC meeting in Panama.

Global RIR. According to its author, Nicolas Antoniello, the proposal to create a virtual RIR (Global Internet Registry) seeks to serve organizations that are global by nature and have operations in more than one region. According to Antoniello, the virtual RIR would be responsible for assigning IP addresses and Autonomous Systems Numbers to those organizations without a well-defined and single regionalization.

In his rationale, the proposal’s author notes that there are currently several organizations that operate in more than one region and request address resources from one RIR and then use those same addresses (even the same Autonomous System) in more than one region outside the one where resources were obtained. You can read more information on this proposal here.

One-way transfers to LACNIC. Daniel Miroli of IP Trading maintains his proposal to allow organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean to obtain address blocks from other Regional Internet Registries. To justify this, Miroli argues that “one-way interregional transfers to LACNIC” would give many of the region’s operators the opportunity to acquire resources and have them duly registered with LACNIC. Find out further details of the proposal here.

Resources due to mergers/acquisitions. Another issue under discussion on the policy mailing list that will be analyzed in Panama refers to an update of the policy on transfers due to mergers/acquisitions.

Ricardo Patara proposes that legacy resources that are transferred due to the purchase or merger of a company or organization should no longer be considered as legacy resources, and should not be transferred again under transfer policy 2.3.2.18 for one year. Therefore, the two transfer policies (2.3.2.17 due to acquisition/merger and 2.3.2.18 other transfers) would be consistent. More details are available here.

IP-based geolocation There has been an increase in the number of Internet services delivering or restricting content based on the user’s location, Jorge Lam affirmed to justify his policy proposal for adding new requirements for establishing the location of an IP address. Today, one of the most widely used resources for geolocation is the information that can be obtained from LACNIC’s registry.

However, if an IP address is reassigned to a country other than the one where it was assigned by LACNIC, the IP location information is more difficult to obtain because this information is not reflected in the file published on the WHOIS.

Lam also proposes to publish a file with the sub-assignments made by LACNIC members to facilitate IP-based geolocation.

A New Policy Development Process Jordi Palet has proposed an important modification to the Policy Development Process (PDP).

Palet proposes seeking consensus online and discussing policy proposals on the policy mailing list without the need for their discussion at the public forum.

He proposes eliminating the requirement of reaching consensus at the public forum and adding an appeals process in the event of disagreements regarding consensus.

In summary, Palet proposes discussing policies on the policy mailing list for eight weeks, after which the chairs will have two weeks to decide whether there is consensus. If so, the proposal would enter a last-call-for-comments period before being sent to the LACNIC Board. https://politicas.lacnic.net/politicas/detail/id/LAC-2018-6?language=en

Abuse contacts. A policy proposal is currently under discussion on the list and will be analyzed in depth in Panama, to improve how LACNIC member organizations register their contacts for cases of abuse. This proposal seeks to guarantee the existence of an accurate abuse-c contact in the event of possible cases of victims and define the process for use. https://politicas.lacnic.net/politicas/detail/id/LAC-2018-5?language=en

Two IPv6 proposals. Two IPv6 policy proposals will also be under discussion. One of them involves a technical change on the update of IPv6 address allocation and assignment recommendations (https://politicas.lacnic.net/politicas/detail/id/LAC-2018-4?language=en ) and the other one refers to IPv6 sub-assignments (https://politicas.lacnic.net/politicas/detail/id/LAC-2018-7?language=en)