Summary

  • A network may have a willing counterparty and a recipient ready to justify need; LACNIC’s proposal would still make the RIR rulebooks a separate gate.
  • Staff said transfers occur between entities; version 2 again makes eligibility depend on reciprocal, compatible policies between RIRs, without publishing a test.

A willing counterparty and a recipient able to justify need would not settle eligibility under LACNIC’s second draft. A cross-region IPv4 transfer would also depend on whether the two RIRs share compatible, reciprocal need policies. The draft leaves that check without a published test.

The wording has moved. Version 1 tied permission to entities served by RIRs whose transfer policies require recipients to justify need. LACNIC staff then pointed out that the transaction is between entities, not registries, and recommended changing the text to match. The staff’s reading was narrower than a general policy comparison: the other RIR would need to require a justified-need test for transfers originating in LACNIC. Its own domestic allocation rules would not be part of that test.

Version 2 names the RIRs again. It makes compatibility a property of the institutions’ policies, while leaving the underlying transaction between resource holders. The sentence does not identify who decides whether two policies are compatible, which documents count, or whether a recipient’s proof of need settles the question.

For an operator, the gap is practical: the version 2 page offers no test or counterpart list for checking whether a transfer path qualifies. In its version 1 comments, LACNIC staff said implementation would be immediate and require coordination and confirmation from other RIRs. Version 2 leaves the confirmer unnamed.

LACNIC lists version 2 as under discussion from 16 October through 11 December 2026. A first consensus assessment is scheduled for 11–25 December. The next draft can answer who is being tested and how reciprocity is confirmed. Until then, the proposed gate has a condition and no published measuring stick.

The absent operational fact is a written compatibility test naming the qualifying recipient-need rules and the office that confirms them. Publishing that test would show whether eligibility follows a holder’s demonstrated need, a registry pair’s policy match, or both.

Official records