------------------------------------------------------------------- APNIC Document identity Title: Proposal for Internet Service Provider Confederation Category Short title: proposal-confed-cat Document ref: APNIC-051 Version: 001 Date of original publication: 19 January 1997 Date of this version: 19 January 1997 Review scheduled: n/a Obsoletes: n/a Status: Historical Comments: n/a -------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal for Internet Service Provider Confederation Category Issued: Jan 19, 1997 Expires: N/A Author: David Conrad Introduction This document describes the concepts of and proposes the requirements necessary for an APNIC recognized Internet Service Provider Confederation. ISP Confederations are intended to provide a means by which a group of service providers can group together to provide resource allocation and registration services tailored to their specific local language and cultural requirements as well as a way of reducing the burden of the APNIC membership fees to individual member organizations. Rationale APNIC, having limited resources, is unable to provide allocation and registration services tailored to specific cultural or language requirements, thus APNIC is required to perform all official business in the "lingua franca" of the Internet, English. In many cases, this has resulted in confusion and frustration on the part of the requestor and/or APNIC. In addition, at this time and for the purposes of billing, APNIC treats groups of service providers joining together identically to an individual service provider. In an attempt to reduce the global routing tables however, APNIC allocates address space differently to confederations than to ISPs, allocating a /19 to the confederation registry for all new confederation members and reviewing the allocation history for the parts of the confederation registry's address space that corresponds to the member which has exhausted their allocation. The implication of this treatment of confederations is that a) APNIC runs the risk of being unable to obtain sufficient funds to recover costs and b) APNIC's staff is spending significantly more time processing conferderation requests than normal ISP requests. To expand on (a) in an extreme example, suppose a confederation were to establish itself, calling itself "small", and then procede to convince all current APNIC members that they should obtain resources from the confederation instead of APNIC. The result would be that APNIC's income would be reduced to exactly US $2500 per year, clearly an insufficient level at which APNIC could function. Internet Service Provider Confederations In realization of APNIC's limitations described above, APNIC proposes to create a new category, known as "Internet Service Provider (ISP) Confederation". ISP Confederations are defined to be a group of three or more Internet connectivity service providing organizations (commercial or non-commercial) known as the confederation members and an independent operational body known as the confederation registry. It is assumed that the confederation registry can act in a neutral and unbiased fashion to all confederation members and that the membership can entrust confidential information to the confederation registry safely. A confederation's membership can be deliniated in many ways. In some cases, a confederation may be formed by a national government or other national body and be intended to provide allocation and registry services to service providers within the national boundaries. In other cases, competitive Internet service providers in multiple regions may join together to form a confederation with the only constraint on membership being a willingness to abide by the confederation's oprational and organizational rules. In all cases, however, it is expected that the definitions for membership within a confederation are well defined and published. It should be noted that there is no intent to require a given ISP to become a member of a particular confederation, even if the ISP meets the membership requirements for the confederation. Confederation membership is considered voluntary and an ISP is always free to apply for APNIC or other appropriate registry membership. Establishment Requirements To become an APNIC recognized Internet Service Provider confederation and have resources delegated from APNIC, it is proposed that a confederation registry must be estabished under the following requirements: 1) The confederation registry must be an independent, non-profit entity (not necessarily incorporated, however this is recommended) administratively distinct from any one particular confederation member. This allows the confederation registry to act in a neutral and unbiased fashion towards all members. 2) The confederation registry must be composed of three or more non-affiliated Internet connectivity service providing organizations which provide Internet connectivity services which require delegation of blocks of addresses. This requirement ensures the overhead associated with a confederation is distributed over a sufficient number of organizations as well as reducing the likelihood of confederations being established to circumvent existing registry policies. 3) The confederation registry must pay a yearly fee to APNIC consisting of a base fee corresponding to the confederation's self determined size plus US $500 per member. This requirement will ensure APNIC has sufficient resources to continue processing confederation requests. 4) The allocation body of the confederation registry must demonstrate an understanding and willingness to abide by the guidelines documented in RFCs 2050 and 1930. This requirement ensures allocations made by the confederation are appropriate and consistent with existing registry guidelines. 5) The confederation registry must provide documents describing (in English): a) Confederation organizational structure and procedures including administrative structure and chain of appeal thereby giving APNIC the information necessary to adjudicate disputes brought before it; b) Membership eligibility requirements and termination procedures thereby allowing APNIC for redirect requests to confederations where appropriate c) Member organizations including i) Member organization's name ii) Member organization's postal address iii) Member organization's email, telephone and facsimile numbers iv) Member organization's APNIC account name (if such exists) thereby reducing the likelihood of organizations joining multiple confederations in order to circumvent allocation restrictions. d) IP address allocation guidelines beyond those documented in RFC 2050. e) AS number allocation guidelines beyond those documented in RFC 1930. The documents described in (5) will be made available to the Internet community via APNIC's informational services. Modifications to a confederation's structure, its membership, or any of its policies must be reported to APNIC within ten working days. In addition to these requirements, it is assumed confederations operate their own registration database systems. If the primary language of the confederation is not English, it is suggested the confederation database be provided in the appropriate local language. In any case, the operation of a local database does not relieve the confederation of the requirement of updating the APNIC database as the APNIC database is considered authoritative for all address blocks delegated by APNIC. Operational Requirements Confederations will be allocated blocks of addresses and autonomous sytem numbers which are intended to be sub-allocated to confederation member organizations, with the amount of address space allocated by APNIC rounded up to the next power-of-two block. It is expected the confederation will allocate resources to their members in a fashion similar to the allocation mechanisms documented in RFC 2050 (e.g., "slow-start") and RFC 1930. When a member has consumed its allocation, the member should contact the confederation administrator to request additional address space. If the confederation administrator has insufficient resources to meet the member's request, the confederation administrator should request additional space from APNIC via the appropriate form. When APNIC receives this form, APNIC will review the allocation history for the confederation and verify reassignments have been made appropriately. Assuming all requirements have been met, APNIC will allocate additional resources sufficient to enable the confederation to operate 3 to 6 months without need of additional address space. APNIC always reserves the right to reduce or withhold resource allocations to confederations which do not conform to APNIC or accepted Internet allocation policies. Should a confederation be established which has as a member an existing APNIC member, APNIC will not allocate a new block to the confederation for that member immediately, but will instead transfer control of that block to the confederation. For the purposes of voting in APNIC meetings, a confederation is entitled to cast votes based on the following: Votes for self-determined category (Large = 4, Medium = 2, Small = 1) plus 1 vote for every 5 members to a maximum of 8 votes. Thus if a confederation chooses to call itself "medium" and has 17 members, it would pay US $5000 + 17 * $500 = $13500 and would be able to cast 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5 votes. Conclusion Internet Service Provider Confederations are intended to provide resource allocation and registration services to subsets of the Asia Pacific Internet community which APNIC serves. These confederations allow for local language and culture issues to be address more readily than APNIC can provide for as well as allowing confederation members with a way to reduce fees paid directly to APNIC for APNIC membership.