Summary

  • ARIN’s public TIPTOP draft remains under discussion in its 27 May version, which would let ARIN allocate both IPv4 and IPv6 space beyond Earth orbit if broader coordination and Board approval line up.
  • A 23 October IETF individual draft asks IANA for an IPv6 block and puts distribution with the NRO. Earth has a routing sketch, not an agreed address authority.

A route plan needs someone to sign it

A prefix is a compact claim that a set of addresses belongs together. On Earth, operators inherit a registry system built over decades. A network beyond Earth orbit would begin with a stranger question: who is entitled to issue the address block that makes those routes legible to everyone else?

ARIN’s Draft Policy 2026-1, “Taking IP To Other Planets,” offers one answer, but only conditionally. Its public text, dated 27 May, says ARIN may allocate IPv4 and IPv6 space to organizations running IP networks beyond Earth orbit, including on the Moon. The proposed hierarchy follows celestial regions: the Moon, Earth–Moon Lagrange points, the asteroid belt and other planetary systems. Operators could advertise more-specific routes when needed; aggregation is encouraged, not compulsory.

The draft itself lists the signatures its plan still needs. The IETF and IANA must determine that dedicated address resources and registry coordination are necessary. The RIRs must agree on operational responsibilities. ARIN’s Board must decide that taking the role fits the organization’s mission. A policy can describe a planetary address map. It cannot manufacture the block or authorize its keeper by writing “ARIN may.”

ARIN staff made that gap explicit in its 1 April review. A dedicated pool is a prerequisite for meaningful aggregation, the review says, but the pool’s source and availability must be specified. It also questions whether ARIN should act as the default registry, even temporarily, and says that decision would depend on its Board, community sentiment and acknowledgment from the other RIRs. The review lists both implementation timeframe and implementation requirements as unavailable; a comprehensive review must wait for a more developed draft.

The text on ARIN’s page has not caught up with the direction described by its policy shepherds. At the 17 September Advisory Council meeting, the shepherd said the TIPTOP working group was moving to IPv6-only and that removing IPv4 was the largest needed change. The public policy page still shows its 27 May version, with both address families. At ARIN 58 on 22 October, the policy remained a Draft Policy and the discussion included whether this subject belongs inside the Number Resource Policy Manual at all.

The IETF’s 23 October address proposal sharpens the difference. It is an individual Internet-Draft, not an IETF-endorsed document and not a standard. It asks IANA to allocate IPv6 address space for space environments, then leaves the Number Resource Organization to determine how addresses are allocated within celestial regions. The earlier May address draft instead described one existing RIR—or a new registry—administering a common space block. The IETF document index still labels that older text as awaiting working-group adoption polling. These papers share a concern about aggregation; they do not yet name one settled administrator.

That distinction matters more than the celestial vocabulary. Assigning a block per Moon, planet or orbit is a topology decision. Choosing who can issue that block is an authority decision. The first can be sketched with prefixes. The second needs a mandate accepted by the organizations and operators who will live with it.

The public record still lacks a revised ARIN text that names the address pool and its administrator; publishing that revision would change this assessment. Until then, “space addressing” describes a set of proposals with a routing rationale, not an operating registry.

Sources