Summary

  • In 2009 Andy Linton and Terry Manderson proposed APNIC prop-073: an existing IPv4 allocation or assignment would establish eligibility for a first IPv6 block. Members would request the block through a simple online step.
  • The proposed match was exact: an IPv4 allocation holder could qualify for an IPv6 /32; an IPv4 assignment holder for a /48. APNIC could reserve prefixes in advance, but the choice and timing rested with its Secretariat.
  • APNIC implemented the policy on 10 February 2010. In a 2018 retrospective, APNIC said almost 7,000 APNIC and national-registry members had benefited, receiving a combined amount equivalent to 104 /32s.

The form APNIC had already read

At the August 2009 APNIC 28 Policy SIG, Andy Linton offered a rare public-policy suggestion: look in the filing cabinet before asking for another form. An operator with an IPv4 allocation or assignment had already been examined by the registry. If that existing record established the relevant network need, what exactly would a fresh IPv6 justification prove? “What's already in the database is the justification. You've already justified,” Linton told the room. The sentence is blunt enough to fit on a sticky note above a service desk.

Linton and Terry Manderson put that idea into prop-073. Their final text drew two lanes through the ledger. A member holding an IPv4 allocation could qualify for an initial IPv6 /32; a member with an IPv4 assignment could qualify for a /48. The distinction mattered because an allocation can be passed on to downstream networks, while an assignment serves the holder's own use. In the meeting debate Linton resisted inventing an “endsite” label for the second lane. APNIC's records already had the categories the policy needed.

The application was deliberately small. A qualified member would request IPv6 through a simple mechanism in APNIC's existing online systems. The proposal also allowed the Secretariat to reserve suitable prefixes for some or all eligible members, on a schedule of its choosing. A reservation was a way to prepare the counter; the member still came forward to claim the resource. That separation kept the operator's decision to deploy in the operator's hands and let the registry reuse evidence it had already accepted.

The authors also checked the bill. Under APNIC's then-current fee schedule, they said the IPv6 delegation would not raise an existing member's annual assessed address fee. Around 1,300 APNIC members lacked an IPv6 allocation at the time, according to the proposal. Even if all requested a /32, the authors calculated that the total would occupy between a /22 and a /21 of IPv6 space; some would receive smaller /48 assignments. The 2009 calculation sized the proposed entry route.

A policy that survived contact with the counter

The proposal history records consensus at the Policy SIG on 27 August 2009, then at the APNIC Member Meeting the following day. The Executive Council endorsed it in November. A February 2010 meeting transcript confirms implementation on 10 February. A line spoken in a policy room had become an operating rule.

Eight years later, an APNIC retrospective reported almost 7,000 members across APNIC and national Internet registries had benefited, with allocated space equivalent to 104 /32s. Those figures describe access to address resources under the policy. Routing announcements and traffic would tell the next part of the story: how many recipients turned the new resource into a working network. The registry made entry easier; deployment remained an operator's job.

The boundary was equally concrete. The final proposal left historic resource holders outside this shortcut, and a national Internet registry had to choose whether to adopt it for its own members. For direct APNIC members, though, Linton's question landed. A registry is paid to keep accurate records. In this instance, reading its own record let it stop asking an operator to prove the same basic fact twice.

Source record