RIPE: twelve database spellings, one policy gap

RIPE Fixed Twelve Database Spellings. Policy Ambiguity Still Lands on the NCC’s Desk.

Why it matters

At RIPE 93, Remco van Mook drew a line between a registry error staff could repair and unclear policy the community must settle. Day-to-day interpretation sits in between.

Theo March2 November 2026Reading Time 2 minLast update: 2 November 2026

RIPE 93 contrasted a clear database correction with policy ambiguity left for the registry to apply.

Summary

At RIPE 93, Remco van Mook said RIPE NCC handles ambiguity that the Address Policy community has left in its policy text.
His contrast was concrete: twelve spellings of one database status value were cleaned up without a proposal, while removal of ALLOCATED PI required the 2018-03 policy process.

A database can have twelve ways to spell one status and still have an easy fix. Remco van Mook told RIPE 93 that RIPE NCC cleaned up just such a mess after he pointed it out at RIPE 82. No policy proposal was needed: the intended value was clear. His harder example was an old status, ALLOCATED PI. Removing it from policy took proposal 2018-03, accepted on 23 April 2018. The two jobs expose where a registry's discretion ends and a community decision begins.

Van Mook's more pointed observation concerned the space between those jobs. The RIPE community has left policies incomplete and inconsistent, he said, and RIPE NCC absorbs the ambiguity when it has to apply them. That is an account from a participant, not a documented tally of disputed registration decisions. Yet RIPE's current Policy Development Process draws the formal boundary: the community makes policy through proposals and consensus; the NCC and resource holders may set operating procedures to apply it, provided those procedures conform to policy. The clerk can standardise a spelling.

A policy meaning needs a different signature.

The problem is that users encounter the applied rule before the community finishes debating its words. Van Mook described a trap: a comprehensive fix is called too complex, then a narrower version is faulted for missing a corner case. His proposed first step is a references-only policy index, with a possible later appendix showing how NCC interprets rules in operation. Participants warned that even a helpful clarification beside a reference could alter policy; Peter Hessler separately urged an inventory of conflicting definitions. No index or interpretation log was adopted in that session.

The missing document is a dated list of real interpretive cases and their decisions. It would show exactly how often the secretariat has had to fill a gap.

Sources: RIPE 93 Address Policy transcript; accepted proposal 2018-03; current RIPE Policy Development Process.