Summary

  • Erik Bais's RIPE proposal 2015-04 consolidated transfer rules for IPv4, IPv6, AS numbers and inter-RIR moves into one document. RIPE accepted its fourth version on 14 March 2017.
  • The accepted text starts a 24-month no-policy-transfer period when scarce resources such as IPv4 or 16-bit ASNs reach a holder through a merger or acquisition. Another merger may still change the holder during that period, and the transfer ledger must publish both kinds of change.

Buying a company can move its address space without an ordinary policy transfer. Erik Bais's first RIPE 2015-04 draft treated that distinction as a hole in the clock. Scarce number resources already had a 24-month wait before the recipient could transfer them under RIPE policy. The draft extended the wait to resources received through a merger or acquisition, then asked RIPE NCC to publish those business changes alongside conventional transfers.

The proposal also cleaned a mess of its own making. Transfer clauses sat in separate IPv4, IPv6 and AS-number policies and an inter-RIR document. Applicants had to assemble a rulebook from four shelves. Bais proposed one transfer policy, with the resource-specific limits spelled out there. The administrative consolidation mattered because the 24-month rule would now meet every route by which a new holder entered the registry.

The accepted fourth version draws a narrow line. Scarce resources, explicitly illustrated by IPv4 and 16-bit ASNs, cannot be transferred under RIPE policy for 24 months from the date the resource was received. Receipt through a merger starts the same clock. Yet the text expressly permits another merger or acquisition inside that window. RIPE NCC's impact analysis explains the distinction: it can regulate a policy transfer, while a company merger or network acquisition can happen at any time. The clock begins when the new holder is registered in the RIPE Database.

The exception is the story, not a footnote. A buyer cannot simply acquire an IPv4 block through a merger today and sell it as a policy transfer tomorrow. A second genuine company acquisition can still move the resource while the waiting period runs. That preserves business restructuring, but it also means the waiting rule cannot be measured by counting holder changes alone. The route matters.

Bais supplied the receipt. Section 4 requires a monthly or more frequent public list naming the offering and receiving parties, the resource or subdivided prefixes, the date and whether the change was a policy transfer or a merger or acquisition. The registry would show when a resource moved and which legal path carried it. Its impact analysis specifies that the new merger disclosures apply prospectively, after implementation.

RIPE recorded the proposal as accepted on 14 March 2017 and published it as ripe-682. The resulting design gave a transfer buyer a two-year wait, left genuine mergers possible and required the ledger to distinguish one from the other. It could slow a quick resale through the policy channel. It could also reveal a sequence of business changes that a simple transfer count would miss.