Summary

  • Anupam Agrawal and Jordi Palet Martínez coauthored APNIC prop-143 after spotting a peculiar trap: a customer could keep using the same network yet lose the ASN its provider had requested for it when the connectivity contract ended.
  • The adopted 2022 policy kept the return rule and added two recorded transfer routes. The number can move to another APNIC member serving that customer, or to the customer after it becomes an APNIC or NIR member.
  • APNIC's current section 10.4 still makes the actual user meet ASN criteria and leaves the requesting account holder responsible for registration until the handover.

The network stayed; the paperwork walked off

A business changes its internet provider. The router remains, the network remains, the customers remain. Under the old APNIC wording, the autonomous system number obtained through the departing provider had to go back. There is a bureaucratic comedy in telling an operating network to change its name because the firm sending the connectivity invoice changed. For people who configure peers and routing filters, the joke is expensive even without a published price tag.

Anupam Agrawal and Jordi Palet Martínez described that problem in prop-143, first posted in February 2022. Their second version gave three ways the old arrangement could break: the original local registry might fail, the customer might become a direct APNIC or national registry member, or it might simply buy connectivity elsewhere. The common fact was that the user of the ASN had not changed. The administrative holder had.

Agrawal's presence in that argument matters. APNIC's 2021 nomination biography described his work with India Internet Foundations on a community exchange, root-server instances and network measurement, alongside standards and policy-development work. That is a portrait of someone accustomed to the distance between a registry sentence and the operator who has to live with it. The document establishes his background; the proposal itself establishes the case he and Palet made.

An exit with two doors

APNIC's earlier rule was clear about the provider's duty: keep the registration current for the customer, recover the ASN when connectivity ended, then return the recovered number to APNIC or the relevant national registry. The coauthors did not erase those duties. They added clause five: the same ASN can instead be registered through transfer to another APNIC member connecting that customer, or directly to the customer once it becomes an APNIC/NIR member and receives the number by transfer. APNIC's current policy, section 10.4, retains both routes.

The distinction is practical. It gives continuity to a network whose owner and operation have stayed the same while requiring the registry to recognize a new account holder. A customer cannot simply walk away with a number written on a scrap of paper. The final rule ties continuity to a recorded transfer and to the eligibility of the actual network user. Agrawal and Palet turned a provider break from an automatic numbering crisis into a transaction the registry can see.

APNIC's Secretariat also saw a wider market in the background. Its impact assessment noted more data-centre and hosting members requesting multiple ASNs for customers, and floated the possibility of a fee incentive. It sharpened the question of who uses the number and who controls the account. APNIC said the policy change required no system changes. The contested machinery was language.

A small clause with an outsized bill

The proposal reached consensus at APNIC 53 on 2 March 2022, received Executive Council endorsement on 11 April, and appeared in the published policy on 8 August. APNIC's 2022 annual report records its implementation. The later policy renumbered the relevant section to 10.4, but the added alternative remains legible: if the customer network still needs its ASN, a formal transfer can keep that network's identity intact through a change of provider or membership.

This is the sort of rule an operator notices only when it is missing. A registry can call a number portable; a customer discovers whether it truly is on the day an upstream contract ends. Agrawal and Palet put that day into the policy text.

Original records