Today a policy proposal that we submitted to RIPE NCC was published for comment. Policy Proposal 2012-5 wants to increase the transparency of the transfer market for IPv4 addresses by requiring the RIPE NCC to publish a record of all transfers conducted under their policy.
IPv4 address transfer policies were put into place to encourage the movement of unused or underutilized address blocks to networks that need them and value them more highly than the current holder. The functioning of these exchanges is very important to the future of the Internet. The transfer process will work more fairly and efficiently if there is greater transparency regarding who is releasing and who is acquiring IPv4 address blocks, and more public information about each transaction. This will allow policy analysts and members of the community to better analyze and understand the effects of transfer markets. It will provide information about the extent of de-aggregation fostered by the market, the number of transactions, the parties involved, and trends toward prospective concentration of resources. Recording when address transfers were denied on the basis of needs evaluation (without naming the proposed recipient) is also important, because it facilitates greater awareness of the impact of RIPE NCC’s application of needs assessment policies on the transfer market.
Currently, ARIN and APNIC both publish lists of their transfers similar to the one proposed here. RIPE NCC is the only RIR with a transfer policy that does not make the transactions transparent.
You can discuss the proposal if you are on the RIPE “Address Policy Working Group” email list.
Believe it or not, public IPv4 address space will be exhausted in less than a year.