Hello,

[Please pardon the top posting. I am on a mobile device.]

Regarding your sentence:

"Any subsequent allocations [of an AS number] would fall under the same criteria, plus the extra burden of justification by the secretariat to justify additional ASNs."

I humbly request the draft policy authors, the working group community, and the APNIC staff to think carefully about how such policy language will be written, and how such a policy would be implemented.

My experiences have taught me that the answer to the question, "why do you need an additional AS number?" is not easily captured in either policy language or RIR procedures. Why? Because networks are not all built the same.

In well-known situations, there are both regulatory and market-based forces which sometimes back network operators into engineering designs which lack polish. Secondly, network architects like to apply creative solutions to complex situations. What this means in the real world of network operations is that just because you would design Network X to use one AS number doesn't mean I designed it that way; my solution calls for two or three AS numbers.  And this is important because the RIR (in both its AS number policies and its internal procedures for reviewing requests) needs to recognize that when a network operator states he needs an additional AS number, he probably does.

Most importantly, the RIR staff should not be put in a position to have to fully understand a network architecture and
be required to adjudicate its worthiness for an additional AS number.

Thank you for any consideration you can give to this matter, and I look forward to our discussions this week in Fukuoka.

David R Huberman
Microsoft Corporation
Principal, Global IP Addressing

From: sig-policy-bounces@lists.apnic.net <sig-policy-bounces@lists.apnic.net> on behalf of Skeeve Stevens <skeeve@v4now.com>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2015 5:45:12 PM
Cc: sig-policy@lists.apnic.net
Subject: [sig-policy] Prop-114: Modification in the ASN eligibility criteria - explanation.

 

Hi all,

Having read (most of) the feedback, Aftab and I will be putting a new version out probably either late Sunday or Early Monday.  I am at Haneda Airport flying to Fukuoka now and Aftab arrives in Tokyo and I believe will be arriving tomorrow morning. Once we've had time to confer, we will issue new wording.

The object of this policy is to remove the need to be multi-homed to get your initial ASN.  It is not designed to hand out ASN's like candy, not provide them to people who have no intention of multi-homing.

It is designed for those who wish to announce their portable ranges via their own ASN using whatever routing policy they determine to be appropriate for the operation of their network, but removing the requirement to be immediately multi-homed, but having the intention to multi-home at some point (the timeframe should not be mandated) - whether that be permanently or not is not relevant.

Any subsequent allocations would fall under the same criteria, plus the extra burden of justification by the secretariat to justify additional ASN's.

The wording will be based around the above.

The cases for this policy are numerous and the reasons Aftab and I are doing this together is to address several of them.

- Entities not meeting the multi-homing criteria due to economic circumstances, regional access, etc.

- Smaller entities, such as businesses with portable address space that would like more control and flexibility over how they announce their networks, and plan for multi-homing either as a future facility or for cloud/elastic on demand purposes.

The major use case from my perspective is:

- Due to IP runout (ISPs having less and charging more), and some requirements for being portable, I am assisting many businesses become APNIC members and their own address space.  Many of these initially are not multi-homed, but are planning to in the short period as they consider the elastic infrastructure available to them over new initiatives like Megaport and others - where layer 2, BGP to many 'service' providers is the new way of doing business.  I did a presentation on Megaport and Elastic X-Connect Fabrics at the last APNIC in Brisbane for those who saw it.

In Australia (and I am sure other places too), there is the new concept of opportunistic capacity - being able to buy transit on an as-needs basis for any determined time period... 1 week, 1 day, even hourly.  An operator might be single homed, but may wish to bring on elastic/On Demand transit capacity for short periods of time - at which point the would be multi-homed, but then disconnect and then be single-homed again.

Here is a news article about this offering: http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/networking/65730-intabank-partners-with-megaport

Megaport is across Australia ,Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and heading for the US and Europe - as well as other elastic fabrics such as Pacnet's PEN, Equinix Cloud Exchange, IX Australia and others coming.  This way of doing business will be commonplace for businesses in certain regions rapidly over 2015 - especially as 

To cater for this explosion in elastic fabrics and marketplaces that serve them, the policy framework has to facilitate a smooth way of doing this new 'cloud' kind of business - without businesses having to 'fudge the truth' to get thr required resources.

APNIC has ability to do rapid memberships within a very short period (1 day) with address space and ASN's up and running very quickly.

This is the key reason for my proposed change to policies 113 and 114, as well as supporting Aftabs motivations on assisting smaller providers in regional areas, or economically challenged locations where multi-homing is not as easy as it might be elsewhere, prepare their networks to participate in being multi-homed for the standard reasons.

If you have any comments about this, or have any advice on wording, restrictions, we would love to hear from you by tomorrow PM so we can consider your thoughts and also any perceived problems with the policy and (preferably) with ways to meet the need, but deal with any potential abuse.

Thanks.

...Skeeve

Skeeve Stevens - Senior IP Broker

v4Now - an eintellego Networks service

skeeve@v4now.com ; www.v4now.com

Phone: 1300 239 038; Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve

facebook.com/v4now ; linkedin.com/in/skeeve

twitter.com/theispguy ; blog: www.theispguy.com

IP Address Brokering - Introducing sellers and buyers

-----------------------------------------------------------
prop-114-v001: Modification in the ASN eligibility criteria
-----------------------------------------------------------

Proposer:     Aftab Siddiqui
              aftab.siddiqui@gmail.com

              Skeeve Stevens
              skeeve@eintellegonetworks.com


1. Problem statement
--------------------

    The current ASN assignment policy dictates two eligibility criteria
    and both should be fulfilled in order to get an ASN. The policy
    seems to imply that both requirements i.e. multi-homing and clearly
    defined single routing policy must be met simultaneously, this has
    created much confusion in interpreting the policy.

    As a result organizations have either provided incorrect information
    to get the ASN or barred themselves from applying.


2. Objective of policy change
-----------------------------

    In order to make the policy guidelines simpler we are proposing to
    modify the text describing the eligibility criteria for ASN
    assignment by removing multi-homing requirement for the organization.


3. Situation in other regions
-----------------------------

ARIN:
    It is not mandatory but optional to be multi-homed in order get ASN

RIPE:
    Policy to remove multi-homing requirement is currently in discussion
    and the current phase ends 12 February 2015
        Policy - https://www.ripe.net/ripe/policies/proposals/2014-03

LACNIC:
    only inter-connect is mandatory not multi-homing

AFRINIC:
     It is mandatory to be multi-homed in order to get ASN.


4. Proposed policy solution
---------------------------

    An organization is eligible for an ASN assignment if it:
     - Is planning to use it within next 6 months


5. Advantages / Disadvantages
-----------------------------

Advantages:

    Removing the mandatory multi-homing requirement from the policy will
    make sure that organizations are not tempted to provide wrong
    information in order to fulfil the criteria of eligibility.

Disadvantages:

    No disadvantage.


6. Impact on resource holders
-----------------------------

    No impact on existing resource holders.


7. References
-------------

*              sig-policy:  APNIC SIG on resource management policy           *
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