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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
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    Proposal for Internet Service Provider Confederation Category

			 Issued: Jan 19, 1997
			     Expires: N/A
	       Author: David Conrad <davidc@apnic.net>



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.