Aftab Siddiqui made APNIC reject non-public origin ASNs in ROAs

Aftab Siddiqui Took the Bad ASN Out of APNIC's ROA Form

Why it matters

APNIC had told members not to put private or unallocated ASNs into route records. They kept appearing. Aftab Siddiqui's prop-150 moved the rule from advice into the registry's admission desk, with one deliberate exception: AS0.

Sofia Ren2 November 2026Reading Time 2 minLast update: 2 November 2026

Aftab Siddiqui; likeness grounded in the named APNIC 54 nominee photograph. The policy workspace is imagined.

Summary

Aftab Siddiqui's prop-150 asked APNIC to stop account holders creating ROAs or matching Whois route objects with private, reserved or unallocated origin ASNs. A 2021 guideline had left such ROAs in place.
APNIC's current policy prohibits those origin choices, calls for notice and non-renewal of affected existing ROAs, and exempts AS0. APNIC says the implementation work is complete.

A warning is a weak bouncer

A Route Origin Authorization binds an address prefix to an AS allowed to originate it. The owner can sign the statement, but a signed statement naming a private, reserved or unallocated AS can still be a bad public record. Siddiqui had watched an earlier proposal become guidance in December 2021. In his January 2023 text, he reported that the unwanted ROAs still existed. The form was accepting entries the guidance told people to avoid.

He also identified a quieter lifecycle problem. A holder might authorize somebody else's ASN; later, APNIC could reclaim that ASN after an account closure. The old ROA would then point at a number no longer assigned to that operator. A one-time check at creation would miss the change. Siddiqui therefore proposed notice and no automatic renewal when the origin number became unallocated.

The proposal record gives the institutional sequence: consensus at APNIC 55 on 2 March 2023, Executive Council endorsement on 21 April, and policy publication on 20 July. The enacted Section 10.6 excludes IANA unallocated numbers and named private and reserved ranges. Existing affected ROAs are not automatically renewed and are deleted after notification; the corresponding route and route6 records follow the rule. APNIC's product review says implementation work is complete.

AS0 is the exception that explains the design. It is reserved, but it is used to mark address space that should not be routed. Rejecting every reserved ASN would destroy that legitimate signal. The registry now distinguishes a meaningful zero from an impossible public origin.

No public count in these records shows how many ROAs were rejected or removed. The concrete change is at the gate: a registry that once advised members now refuses to keep publishing the bad origin choice.

Sources: prop-150 v002; proposal history; current APNIC policy; product review.