Summary

  • Gerry George and Brian Jones shepherded ARIN-2023-8, a proposal to cut the maximum IPv4 waitlist issue from a /22 to a /24 while reserving the queue for organizations without ordinary IPv4 holdings.
  • George presented a grandfather clause for existing applicants at ARIN 54. After a long debate and just two unenthusiastic replies to his final mailing-list post, he moved to abandon the draft in August 2025; the Advisory Council agreed unanimously.

The neat version fit on one slide: if the cupboard holds a fixed number of IPv4 addresses, serve smaller portions. Gerry George brought that arithmetic to ARIN 54 in Toronto in October 2024. He opened with a joke about the Canadian cold, then turned to an American Registry for Internet Numbers queue that made applicants wait years for addresses. Under the draft he and Brian Jones shepherded, the maximum waitlist award would fall from a /22 to a /24. One quarter as many addresses per maximum award meant more possible recipients from the same returned stock.

The archived ARIN-2023-8 text carried more than portion control. It would bar organizations that had previously held ordinary IPv4 space, require a live-network need for a /24, and restrict transfer of waitlist space for 60 months, with an exception for merger and acquisition transfers under section 8.2. George was a shepherd of the proposal, not its original proposer. His job was to take a contested rule through public discussion and decide whether it could stand.

At the microphone, the elegant arithmetic acquired a past tense. People already in line had filed under rules allowing a larger block. Would ARIN shrink an existing request after the applicant had waited? George said the debate had polarized, but protection for those applicants had drawn agreement. The draft grandfathered requests made before a rule change. That choice kept faith with the old queue and pushed any benefit for newcomers further into the future. George told the meeting that, with protection, it could take another two or more years before the smaller-award rule affected distributions.

His slide still said three years; he corrected it aloud because the estimate mentioned that day was a little over two.

There was enough argument in Toronto to fill a lunch table. Some speakers liked the /24 goal; others disputed the eligibility language or called for a fresh, simpler proposal. George put numbers on the tension: at that meeting he cited a list of 702 requests and a hypothetical reduction to 501 under a /24 limit, based on then-current distributions. Those were figures for the 2024 debate. By June 2025 the draft’s problem statement again described a roughly 700-entry queue and a three-year expectation for newcomers. The queue kept moving while the proposed fix kept arguing with its own transition clause.

In August 2025, George gave the Advisory Council a different measurement: his last mailing-list appeal had drawn two lackluster responses. The policy had been discussed for nearly two years; that final silence came after a noisy history. He judged that people cared about protecting those already waiting, but had little appetite for the /22-to-/24 change itself. George moved to abandon the draft. Jones seconded him, and the council voted unanimously. ARIN marked it abandoned on 26 August. The man who had explained the smaller portions also called time on the recipe.