Summary

  • RIPE proposal 2026-01 would remove the needs assessment only for an eligible holder’s first ASN; an ASN in use would still require a routing-policy entry in the RIPE Database.
  • The proposal is in Review Phase through 10 November 2026. Rules for additional ASNs remain unchanged, and no adoption decision has been made.

Analysis

At RIPE 93, Leo Vegoda and co-proposer Urban Suhadolnik put a narrow question to the Address Policy Working Group: should a network have to justify its need before RIPE NCC assigns its first AS number? Their proposal, 2026-01, says no—if the applicant falls inside a defined boundary.

That boundary does real work. RIPE NCC’s impact analysis says the applicant must legitimately hold a qualifying prefix distributed directly by RIPE NCC, including eligible permanent policy transfers or mergers and acquisitions, but not temporary transfers or assignments. The applicant must have no ASNs or hold only legacy ASNs or ASNs received through temporary arrangements. Vegoda described the change at RIPE 93 as one first ASN per organisation, not a new supply line for every project.

The policy would remove the needs justification; it would not erase the registry record. Version 2.0 says that when the ASN is in use, its routing policy should be documented in the RIPE Database. RIPE NCC’s 12 October Review Phase notice identifies that requirement as the main change from version 1.0.

And the next ASN still has to earn its place under the current policy. The proposal says the rules for additional ASNs do not change: a single entity can receive more than one only if it qualifies under the existing requirements. That is the proposal’s political bargain in one line—less paperwork for the first number, no general right to collect more.

The proposers argue that removing the first-ASN needs assessment could cut request time and let providers offer some BGP-based products to single-homed customers. The proposal also records the counterargument: more ASNs used by single-homed networks could add entries to the global routing table and bring forward equipment replacement. Neither outcome has been measured under an adopted rule, because this remains a proposal.

As of 1 November, it is in the four-week Review Phase, with comments requested before 10 November. The Working Group chairs will decide whether rough consensus has formed. The record that matters next is the final text and that consensus decision, not a forecast written into the proposal.

The earlier Discussion Phase was less tidy than that benefits pitch. The Address Policy chairs’ 2 September summary recorded six participants supporting the text as written and one supporting an amendment to retain an RPSL routing-policy requirement. Critics asked for evidence that the current rule blocks operators, questioned the scope, flagged research and operations workload, and called the future-product case speculative. That was the earlier discussion tally, not the Review Phase decision.

Sources