187 / 208
[
] 187
IP management today
Around the same time, the first of the Regional Internet Registries
(RIRs) formed – as representatives of the regional addressing
communities – and commenced registry operations under the
delegated authority of IANA.
From the start, the RIRs have worked in a coordinated, cooperative
way. An example of this is the document RFC 2050, published in late
1996, which set out common principles for IP address management
and articulated the global goals to guide regional IP address policy
developments. Those goals include the original IANA goals of unique-
ness and registration, as well as conservation (to maximise the lifetime
of the address pool), aggregation (to ensure that the global routing
system remains scalable), and fairness (to ensure that IP address
resources will be available to all those who need them).
The original three RIRs (RIPE NCC, APNIC, and ARIN) also
worked closely together to assist the emergence of two subse-
quent RIRs, LACNIC andAfriNIC. The five RIRs and their regions
are shown in Figure 2.
RIRs are not-for-profit organizations, which charge fees for
services or membership, not for Internet number resources. RIR
membership generally consists of Local Internet Registries (LIRs),
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telecommunication organizations,
large corporations, and industry stakeholders such as end-users.
IANA delegates to the RIRs the authority to administer and
register IP address space, Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs),
and related services, such as reverse DNS delegations (which allow
IP addresses to be resolved to domain names). The RIRs are not
involved in domain name registration.
RIR policy process
RIRs operate in an open, self-regulatory manner, facilitating
direct participation by any interested party to ensure that the
policies for number resource management are defined by all
who need and use them. The RIRs ensure that policies are
consensus-based and that they are applied fairly and consis-
tently. The RIR framework provides a well-established
combination of bottom-up decision-making and global cooper-
ation that has created a stable, open, transparent, and
documented process for developing number resource policies.
Each RIR holds independent public policy meetings to discuss
and develop policy proposals. Public mailing lists allow the
entire Internet community to participate in the process.
The NRO and global coordination
In 2003, the RIRs formed the Number Resource Organization
(NRO) to undertake the joint activities of the RIRs, including joint
technical projects, liaison activities, and policy coordination. The
goals of the NRO are to:
• Protect the unallocated Internet number resource pool
• Promote and protect the bottom-up policy development process
• Act as a focal point for Internet community input into the RIR
system.
The NRO does not develop, approve, or implement number
resource policies, but it helps facilitate a process by which global
address policy can be developed, subject to coordination through
all the RIR communities and ratification by the ICANN Board.
What about IPv6?
Today’s Internet is built predominantly around the version of the
IP address protocol known as IPv4, which provides a 32-bit address
space. While there is no current shortage of IPv4 address space, it
is clear that IPv4 will not be sufficient to support the long-term
expansion of ubiquitous Internet devices (likely to include phone
handsets, PDAs, refrigerators, televisions, home automation
systems, cars, appliances, and many other devices not yet
conceived). IPv6, sometimes known as the ‘next generation’
Internet protocol, provides a 128-bit address space, supporting a
number of addresses that is hard to even imagine in human terms.
IPv6 first became available for operational use in 1999, distrib-
uted by the RIRs under the terms of a policy document that was
coordinated at global level and adopted by each of the RIR
regional communities. It is now deployed in networks all over
the globe and supported by all modern operating systems.
It is important to realise that IPv6 is not a replacement for IPv4.
To date, the main deployment model for IPv6 is ‘dual stacking’
where operators support both IPv4 and IPv6 in their networks.
The two protocols both operate across the Internet and most users
will never be aware which address protocol is responsible for deliv-
ering their e-mails or downloading their web pages.
The RIRs provide a forum for the Internet addressing community