Summary

  • ARIN-2026-2 is a Draft Policy under discussion, not an adopted or implemented rule.
  • The proposal would replace public formulas and utilization triggers with documented plans covering assignment units, hierarchy, aggregation and growth.
  • BTW recommends a comparable plan-versus-decision record, while staff operationalization and the applicant evidence burden remain unknown.

ARIN’s proposal text is dated 4 May 2026 and the measure became Draft Policy on 24 June 2026. At the 5 September 2026 reporting freeze, it remained under discussion. The cited drafts index showed no staff/legal review or community-presentation entry. Nothing in the source set shows a recommendation, consensus, last call, Board adoption or implementation, and the proposal is not part of the current NRPM.

The draft would move initial LIR allocation decisions away from the current formula- and utilization-based mechanisms. A request would document typical remote-site or customer assignment sizes, its addressing hierarchy and logical structure, and projected utilization of addressing units at approximately one, two and five years. ARIN would consider downstream assignment numbers and types, aggregation needs and the ability to support contiguous growth. Initial space would be sized for the documented plan and efficient expansion, but the draft does not publish a replacement deterministic sizing formula.

For later LIR requests, the proposed test would include implementation consistent with the prior plan, updated projections and whether expansion of the existing block is feasible. PI requests would likewise be considered through site requirements, internal hierarchy and segmentation, aggregation, growth and avoidance of renumbering. Reassignments or reallocations to external entities of /64 or larger would be registered in ARIN directory services under the proposed text.

That is different from the implemented baseline. Current NRPM 6.5.2.1 uses nibble boundaries, a /32 default floor with /36 or /40 options, IPv4-holding conditions for /40, a /16 ceiling and a formula tied to serving sites, the largest serving site and a 75% standard. NRPM 6.5.2.2 includes prior IPv4 qualification, IPv6 multihoming or technical justification, projected assignments at one, two and five years, and at least 50 assignments within five years. Current NRPM 6.5.3 uses 75% total utilization, more than 90% utilization at a serving site, or more than 90% allocation to serving sites for subsequent LIR allocations.

NRPM 6.5.8 sets an end-user ladder: /48 for one site, /44 for 2–12, /40 for 13–192, /36 for 193–3,072 and /32 above 3,072 sites.

The governance issue is not exhaustion or economic scarcity. It is proportional allocation, aggregation, routing-table fragmentation, continuity and repeatable stewardship. A plan can better reflect an operator’s architecture than a rigid equation. But once several public thresholds disappear, decision quality depends more heavily on consistent interpretation of plans and on comparing implementation with earlier projections. That is an inference from the proposal’s design, not a claim about arbitrary staff conduct or inevitable abuse of discretion.

BTW’s recommendation is a compact decision ledger for each assessment class. It should record the assignment-unit assumptions, hierarchy, one-, two- and five-year projections, variance from the prior plan, the rationale for contiguous growth and why the issued prefix is proportionate. The ledger is this briefing’s recommendation, not an existing or promised ARIN system.

Publication note: Published is the scheduled editorial date, 6 September 2026, in Asia/Shanghai. The actual server publication time remains unset until publish-now.