Summary

  • Jordi Palet Martinez's prop-157 would have let APNIC account holders transfer IPv4 addresses temporarily, with start and end dates in a public log and the original Whois registration restored at expiry.
  • APNIC's assessment pressed the awkward questions: who settles a disputed cancellation, who enforces the contract, and what exactly is revoked? The proposal failed consensus at APNIC 58 in September 2024 and was abandoned.

The easiest part of lending a scarce address is writing a return date. Jordi Palet Martinez did that in prop-157's fourth text. A temporary transfer would appear in APNIC's public transfer log with a start and a finish; an extension needed both parties' agreement and APNIC's recognition. At the end, APNIC would restore the original Whois registration. A /24 remained the minimum unit. This was an intra-region instrument between account holders, designed to let a smaller operator obtain a limited amount of IPv4 without buying a permanent transfer.

The paper solution had an appealing economy. Palet argued that a young network using IPv6-only services with IPv4-as-a-service might need only a small bridge of IPv4 addresses. Temporary registration would show the current user while preserving a route back to the original holder. The proposal even said the recipient could not pass the block on in another transfer. The address had a ticket home.

Then came the question every lending desk eventually meets: what if the book is not returned? Palet's conditions put network-abuse cancellation, an announcing ASN, IPv6 deployment, RPKI, accurate IRR and geolocation records, and MANRS practice into the parties' contract. The source was to oversee them. Yet APNIC's impact assessment asked who acts if the source wants cancellation and the recipient refuses, or if a recipient asks to extend and the source objects. An acquisition or a closed account could scramble the return path as well.

The sharpest ambiguity sat in a proposed warning and “immediate revocation.” Would APNIC revoke only the temporary transfer, or the original holder's resource registration too? The Secretariat said the text did not settle it. Its earlier assessment had also warned that APNIC could not enforce a cancellation clause in a private contract to which it was not a party. A date in a log could be automatic; authority over a disputed handback could not.

The implementation estimate expanded from three months in the first assessment to as much as twelve months for the later draft, with systems, procedures and agreements in scope. APNIC's history records no consensus at the 6 September 2024 meeting; chairs abandoned prop-157 and invited a new proposal that absorbed the feedback. Palet had put a familiar commercial arrangement into registry language. The room found that the return receipt needed an owner, a procedure and a definition of what was being returned.