Summary

  • Gerry George presented ARIN-2025-3 at ARIN 58. The recommended draft would lower the IPv4 footprint required inside the ARIN region for out-of-region use from a /22 to a /24: 1,024 addresses become 256.
  • The same text excludes out-of-region justification from the Waiting List, Micro-allocation Pool and IPv6 Deployment Pool. ARIN staff says the surviving /24 test carries no upper limit on the amount requested for use elsewhere.

A border guard who asks for a smaller passport stamp sounds friendly. Gerry George’s ARIN 58 slide deck did exactly that for IPv4: a network would need to use a /24 inside the registry’s service region, rather than a /22, before justifying addresses for operations outside it. For an operator with a modest home footprint and customers across a border, the arithmetic is welcome. A /24 holds 256 addresses; the old /22 threshold is four times larger.

George is an ARIN Advisory Council shepherd of ARIN-2025-3, alongside Matthew Wilder. The proposal carries a second piece of arithmetic. Out-of-region use could no longer justify an award from the Waiting List, the Micro-allocation Pool or the pool reserved to facilitate IPv6 deployment. Applicants already on the Waiting List would keep the rules that applied when they joined. The draft keeps the IPv6 /44 and ASN tests where they are. So the smaller IPv4 threshold opens one route while the three named pools acquire a closed sign for this particular justification.

ARIN’s staff review spotted the strange scale of the open route. Section 9 sets no ceiling on the IPv4 quantity justified for use outside the region. An applicant using one /24 at home could seek substantially larger blocks for deployment elsewhere. The review called the text implementable and estimated three months of work. A 256-address foothold therefore answers an eligibility question; it does not measure the size of a later allocation.

The closed doors brought a human reply. A participant signing as Quantum argued on ARIN’s policy list that the amendment would push some smaller applicants toward purchased transfers. In his 22 September response, George said the Advisory Council had considered the objection and that recommended-draft status let the meeting take a show of hands while discussion continued. He put the disagreement in the room rather than claiming it had vanished.

At ARIN 58 on 22 October, George presented the draft. ARIN’s day-one account reports a show of hands favouring further advancement of the recommended drafts. ARIN still lists ARIN-2025-3 as under discussion. The next useful question is precise: which small operator gains a cross-border path under the /24 test, and which one must find IPv4 through a transfer because its available issuance channel has changed?