What Happened at LACNIC 40?
October 31, 2023
Almost 1,400 people participated in LACNIC 40, which took place in Fortaleza, at the start of October. The LACNIC community discussed four policies: two focused on obtaining addresses, one focused on cleaning up records from addresses returned to LACNIC, and one focused on the Policy Development Process.
Policies Under Discussion
RIPE allows leasing, as does ARIN, although not as justification to obtain more address space.A similar proposal was rejected at APNIC 56.
LAC-2022-2 v3: Clarification: The lease of resources is not allowed under the policies in force.
LACNIC no longer has any IPv4 addresses left for allocation. Some organizations would like to buy addresses but LACNIC’s transfer market is tiny. Organizations without the capital to buy addresses sometimes need to lease them. This proposal would only allow addresses leases that come with internet connectivity. This wording is used because “lease” also describes the temporary assignment of IP addresses on a local network using protocols like DHCP.
LAC-2023-6 v1: Special exception for global critical infrastructure providers
The networks that serve the DNS root are an example of global critical infrastructure. Everyone benefits from them, wherever their organizational home is. This proposal would let LACNIC make assignments to global critical infrastructure providers. The goal of the proposal is to diversify the source of addresses rather than fill an unmet need. This kind of diversity is more important because RPKI is becoming more important in network operations. Each RIR is the apex of a hierarchy of RPKI digital certificates. Having some of the addresses issued by LACNIC and using its RPKI service spreads the risk across the whole system.
The author has clarified that the policy goal is to let root DNS service operators switch to LACNIC issued addresses despite not being legally established in the region.
LAC-2023-5 v1: Elimination of ROA in case of recovered resources
Organizations document how they use addresses in the Internet Routing Registry (IRR). They are also documenting how they use addresses with digital RPKI certificates called ROAs. This proposal will require LACNIC to remove stale records from the LACNIC IRR and delete ROAs from its RPKI repository when IP addresses are returned.
This proposal has been modified as of September 18th and received some comments in the September mailing list. Overall, there is a general consensus that the ROA removal should be explicitly stated in the policy manual though there is a question about the practical application of regulating the IRR database.
LAC-2023-3 v1: Considerations for Declaring a Proposal Abandoned
LACNIC’s policy development process does not have a mechanism for clearing out proposals that hang around with a status of “Did not reach consensus.” This proposal will empower the chairs to clear these proposals from the system when their authors are not responsive.
The LACNIC community’s feedback on the mailing list has been supportive with one caveat. They want the period extended from 10 months to a year, so that there would be two public forums within that time.
Policies Ratified
LAC-2020-6: Miscellaneous Modifications to the PDP
LACNIC will implement this policy proposal, which was ratified in August. This proposal modified the policy development process by:
- clarifying the responsibilities of the chairs, and
- clarifying the nature of the Last Call phase.
The implementation will require minor software changes to LACNIC’s software.
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