On 14/08/2009, at 22:54 , Jonny Martin wrote:
To increase visibility of this proposal, the authors recommend that the APNIC Secretariat communicate to members and others that the criteria for receiving IPv6 space has been reduced and that the process of obtaining IPv6 address space has been made simpler. We recommend this to show that there is no effective barrier to members obtaining IPv6 addresses.I must agree with other people's comments here. This is something that should be happening anyway, and doesn't really belong in a policy proposal. If IPv6 communications from APNIC are not effective at the moment, then APNIC and the community need to understand why, and improve communications if there is a workable alternative approach.
In the original proposal there was a clear implication that if it was agreed then APNIC would of necessity need to contact each member to inform them of their new IPv6 address block. This was an integral part of proposing this policy.
APNIC do a good job of communicating the IPv6 message but that's not to say the effort is perfect. Many people think it's hard to get IPv6 address space. There are plenty of people out there who still think that you need to be an ISP with plans for 200 downstream connections to qualify.
People on this list are *not* representative of the wider membership - we're on this list because we know about APNIC and we're interested and passionate about making things better - so I think there's a danger that because we know something everyone else should. If we agree on this proposal and a significant number of people don't get to know about it then we haven't really made things simpler.
We had this section in there because it's really important not just to make the process simple but to let people know it's simple. The folks over at the ITU have been sniping at the RIRs that the process is hard - they're doing that so they can get their hands on the address resources. I don't want that to happen.
So I'd argue that this is a policy issue. I talked at length with the Secretariat about this clause and we agreed that a recommendation was OK to have in here. It's simply that - a recommendation, not a requirement.