Draft Policy ARIN-2024-7

Addition of Definitions for General and Special Purpose IP Addresses

Status: Under Discussion
Shepherds: Kaitlyn Pellak, Alison Wood

Current Text (25 June 2024)

Problem Statement:

The Number Resource Policy Manual (NRPM) often treats general purpose and special purpose IP addresses differently. Unfortunately, we don’t have a convenient to use term to describe these categories, so policy often becomes either excessively wordy or does not correctly capture the intent. Examples of this can be found in section 4.1.8 of the NRPM, and in (currently pending) Draft Policies ARIN-2023-8 (where the fact that 4.4 and 4.10 space isn’t counted against an organization is repeated numerous times) and ARIN-2022-12 (where the text does not exclude 4.4 and 4.10 allocations from being counted against an organization, but it is the intent that those allocations should be ignored). Additionally, temporary allocations under section 11 are rarely carved out, even when 4.4 and 4.10 are, even though it is likely the policy’s intent that these too should be ignored.

Policy Statement:

Add the following definitions to Section 2

Special Purpose IPv4 Address - An IPv4 address that the NRPM makes available for specific purposes including maintaining critical Internet infrastructure (Section 4.4), facilitating IPv6 deployment (Section 4.10), or temporarily for experimental purposes as approved by ARIN (Section 11).

General Purpose IPv4 Address - Any IPv4 address issued by ARIN that is not issued solely for the purposes stated under Special Purpose IPv4 Addresses.

Special Purpose IPv6 Address - An IPv6 address that the NRPM makes available for specific purposes such as maintaining critical Internet infrastructure (Section 6.10) or temporarily for experimental purposes as approved by ARIN (Section 11).

General Purpose IPv6 Address - Any IPv6 address issued by ARIN that is not issued solely for the purposes stated under Special Purpose IPv6 Addresses.

Timetable for Implementation: Immediate.

Comments: I originally intended to give a better definition for the general purpose addresses (something along the lines of “An IPvX address indefinitely issued by ARIN without special limitations on its use”), but opted for the current proposal to make it clear that all addresses in scope for the NRPM are either Special Purpose or General Purpose, and that the 2 definitions are mutually exclusive.

Note that this proposal only adds definitions and does not change any of the existing text; I figured it’d be better to leave any use of the definitions to a future policy proposal.

History and Earlier Versions

Related Meetings