Re: Question about past advice to RIRs

[Brian E Carpenter <brc@zurich.ibm.com>]

bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
> > Note that RFCs 1265, 1787, 2008, 2827, and 3704 are included for the  
> > perspectives they present whether currently applicable or not. The  
> > biggest problems seem to arise from RFCs 1881 and 1887; if they are  
> > obsolete, I have an entire section that might disappear.
> >
> >
> > 7.  References
> >
> > 7.2.  Informative References
> >
> >   [RFC1881]  Internet Architecture Board and Internet Engineering
> >              Steering Group, "IPv6 Address Allocation Management",
> >              RFC 1881, December 1995.
> >
> >   [RFC1887]  Rekhter, Y. and T. Li, "An Architecture for IPv6 Unicast
> >              Address Allocation", RFC 1887, December 1995.
>
>
> 	note that both of these documents predate most of the RIR existance,
> 	when the IETF had a direct role in defining allocation policies/stratagies.
>
> 	in todays environment, i would consider both of these documents to be
> 	historical in nature, e.g. not applicable to the current RIR models.
> 	it is useful to note that RFC 1887 is labled "An Architecture..."
> 	which is a clear indication that the authors did not preclude other
> 	valid architectural models.

You're overlooking that RFC 1881 was and remains the basis on which the
IPv6 address space was formally delegated to IANA by the community that
created it. There's no sense in which that delegation is historical.
Certainly we have learned a thing or two since 1995.

On a point of fact, the RIPE-NCC was established in 1992. It was certainly
my assumption in 1995 that IANA would further delegate prefixes to
the registries, and that the registries would remain active in the
IETF, so that address assignment practices would inform and be informed
by IETF discussions. That still seems to be happening, fortunately.

    Brian