Summary

  • AFPUB-2026-IPv4-003-DRAFT01 is version 1.0 of the “Dynamic IPv4 Pools Exhaustion Management Framework”, submitted on 8 June 2026 and still Under Discussion. It establishes no live four-pool inventory or outcome.

  • The draft makes provenance an operational routing rule. Recovered IPv4 space is not generic inventory: traceable origin determines the destination pool, while uncertainty defaults to the Pre-Softlanding Pool.

  • Aggregate reports and announcements cannot alone reproduce a classification. A minimum receipt should identify the recovery event, block, evidence, certainty result, partial-block treatment, destination, authority, notice, before-and-after totals and downstream restriction marker.

  • No allegation of error or gaming is needed. Incomplete lineage, fragments and aggregate-only reporting can change which rules govern a block, which requests proceed and when later restrictions attach.

One block, four possible policy contexts

The current-proposals register lists AFPUB-2026-IPv4-003-DRAFT01 as Under Discussion. The proposal is version 1.0, submitted on 8 June 2026. No consensus, ratification or implementation is established.

The draft would amend CPM Section 5.4 and define four independently tracked pools: the Soft-Landing Pool, Policy-Reserved Pool, Pre-Softlanding Pool and Recovered Pool. Movements between them must be auditable and publicly reportable.

Returned, revoked, reclaimed or otherwise recovered IPv4 resources would first enter the Recovered Pool, an administrative holding area rather than the final destination.

Staff would trace each block to its original source-pool category and return it there. Partial blocks would be classified proportionally. An origin not established with reasonable certainty would default to the Pre-Softlanding Pool.

The decision therefore places scarce space within a policy sequence. Source category is an inventory-routing rule, not legal title or an adjudication of proprietary rights.

The decision is the movement, not the announcement

The proposal says classifications would be documented and publicly announced. A notice can describe a decision without making it reproducible.

An announcement that space moved from the Recovered Pool to the Pre-Softlanding Pool may reconcile an aggregate total, yet omit why a prefix went there, whether part had another origin, which evidence was considered or how a correction should work.

Classification changes two records at once: the block gains a destination, and pool totals change by its address count. Those effects should be joined in one evidence object.

Otherwise, block history and pool arithmetic can drift apart. A notice may identify the block but omit balances; a monthly report may show balances but not the decisions that produced them.

Ordinary simplification is enough: legacy records may differ, recovered space may contain mixed fragments, or reporting may collapse several movements. The remedy is a compact receipt, not maximal disclosure.

Why provenance can change downstream outcomes

The Pre-Softlanding Pool would use a normal maximum /18, minimum /24, 12-month justification period and 80% prior-utilisation requirement, with up to /16 under additional evidence.

A request it cannot satisfy would be automatically deferred to the Soft-Landing Pool, with documentation and applicant notice. Its available-address total therefore affects which route a request takes.

A recovered block classified there could increase that total; the same block returned elsewhere would not. Provenance can thus affect satisfaction, deferral and sequencing without changing any rule text.

When the two primary pools reach zero available space, delegations would move to a post-exhaustion waiting list fed solely by the Recovered Pool. Public evidence must distinguish temporary holding, source-category return and any later waiting-list supply.

Delegations from the Pre-Softlanding Pool and later waiting list would carry a 24-month voluntary-transfer restriction, except for mergers, acquisitions and takeovers. The route may therefore affect a downstream restriction marker.

No real request, deferral, waiting-list entry or transfer is established. These are proposed mechanisms, not observed outcomes.

Aggregate reporting cannot reconstruct the block

The proposed monthly report would include queue length, available-address total, average wait and total recovered space processed. Those indicators can show pressure and throughput. They cannot, alone, prove the provenance route of one block.

“Total recovered space processed” combines events that may have different source categories, certainty levels and partial-block treatments. An available-address total is a closing stock. Neither tells a reader which classification decisions created the movement.

This is the central distinction between transparency and reconciliation. Publication makes information visible. Reconciliation shows how a specific decision altered a specific balance under a specific policy version.

A usable record needs both levels. Monthly reporting should show the pool-wide state. Block-classification receipts should explain the movements that bridge one state to the next.

The receipt can remain privacy-safe. It need not expose confidential applicant material, staff deliberation or every historical document. It can publish evidence classes, observation dates, a reasoned certainty result and references sufficient for challenge and later correction.

The minimum block-classification receipt

The following design stays close to the draft’s own decision path. It records no invented activity, balance or outcome; it defines the evidence fields that a future classification would need.

Receipt field Minimum public content Control purpose
Policy state Proposal or policy identifier, version, status and effective date where applicable Prevents a later rule from being applied retrospectively without explanation
Recovery event Event identifier, recovery type and timestamp Separates return, revocation, reclamation or another recovery route
Block identity Prefix or range and exact address count Fixes the inventory object affected by the decision
Prior delegation reference Publicly usable reference to the earlier delegation state Connects the recovered block to its traceable history without asserting legal title
Claimed source category Soft-Landing Pool, Policy-Reserved Pool or Pre-Softlanding Pool States the historical category being tested
Evidence classes Types of records considered and their observation dates Shows the basis of the decision without requiring indiscriminate disclosure
Certainty result Established or not established with reasonable certainty, plus a concise reason Makes the uncertainty default reviewable rather than automatic by assertion
Partial-block crosswalk Each prefix or range fragment, address count and traceable source category Proves proportional classification when one recovered object has mixed provenance
Destination Pool receiving each classified portion Records the operational result of the provenance test
Decision control Public organisational authority and timestamp Identifies responsibility for the classification action
Public notice Stable notice identifier and publication date Joins the receipt to the draft’s announcement commitment
Pool reconciliation Before and after totals for every affected pool, with the movement quantity Proves that block-level decisions and aggregate inventory agree
Downstream marker Applicable 24-month voluntary-transfer restriction marker or a statement that it does not arise at this stage Preserves the later consequence of the allocation route without predicting a transfer
Challenge history Challenge date, reviewing authority, outcome and reason Makes disagreement visible without implying that every challenge succeeds
Correction chain Superseded receipt, corrected receipt, date and effect on pool totals Prevents a correction from erasing the original decision or breaking inventory history

A receipt identifier should remain stable even if its result is corrected. The correction should create a linked successor and reverse or amend the relevant pool movements explicitly.

That approach preserves both accountability and arithmetic. A reader can see the decision originally made, the reason it changed and the balances affected by the correction.

“Reasonable certainty” needs a reproducible threshold

The uncertainty default prevents an untraceable block from remaining indefinitely in holding and supplies a destination: the Pre-Softlanding Pool.

Yet reasonable certainty does substantive work. Without a public standard, reviewers could reach different destinations from the same incomplete history.

The rule need not prescribe one rigid formula. It should identify recognised evidence classes, conflict and escalation rules, treatment of missing dates, and the authority allowed to find that the threshold was not met.

The receipt should state which evidence classes were observed, their dates and why the threshold was or was not satisfied. That fixes the evidence state used at decision time.

A challenge route should allow relevant new material without silently changing old totals. A correction needs a linked successor decision and an explicit reversal or reallocation.

Partial blocks turn lineage into arithmetic

Partial-block classification is the most demanding provenance case. One recovered prefix may contain portions traceable to different source categories, and the draft says classification would be proportional.

That requires a public crosswalk between address ranges and categories. Percentages alone are insufficient: fragments must sum to the recovered address count, and destination movements must equal the pool changes.

The proposal supplies no worked method for every fragmentation case, so none should be invented. An actual receipt should show the chosen prefixes or ranges and whether space was held pending a technically valid split.

The control is conservation. No address should disappear, appear twice or enter a destination before its portion is defined. A later correction should move only the affected fragment and link predecessor and successor receipts.

Pool totals are policy state

Pool totals are not merely descriptive statistics under this draft. They help determine which allocation path is available next.

For the Pre-Softlanding Pool, an additional block may change whether a request of a given size can be satisfied. If it cannot be satisfied, the draft would defer the request automatically to the Soft-Landing Pool. A provenance decision can therefore alter sequencing even when no rule text changes.

At zero available space in the two primary pools, the proposed waiting-list stage would begin. A discrepancy in classification or reconciliation could make the public trigger appear earlier or later than the block-level record supports.

This is why the before-and-after totals belong inside the classification receipt rather than only in a later monthly report. The receipt proves the immediate inventory effect; the monthly report confirms the accumulated state.

A useful reconciliation would show opening total, additions, deductions, corrections and closing total for each pool. The sum of published classification movements should explain the period’s change, subject to other explicitly identified movements under the operative policy.

No live balance can be inferred from the proposal. The article’s concern is the evidence architecture needed before any future balance acquires operational consequence.

The restriction must remain attached to the route

The proposed 24-month voluntary-transfer restriction applies to delegations from the Pre-Softlanding Pool and later waiting list, with stated exceptions for mergers, acquisitions and takeovers.

A restriction record should therefore cite the allocation route and the classification receipt that contributed the underlying inventory where that link is relevant. It should not rely on a later label copied without history.

The block’s source category does not itself create the restriction. The restriction would arise from a later delegation under the proposed rule. The receipt should preserve the route so that the downstream marker can be explained without turning provenance into legal title.

Corrections need careful treatment. If a classification changes after a delegation, the operative text would need to determine whether the downstream restriction changes, remains fixed or requires a separate decision. The checked draft does not establish an outcome for that scenario.

That uncertainty is another reason to preserve the original classification, allocation event and later correction as separate linked decisions. Collapsing them into the current label would erase which rule applied at each point.

Estimates are not inventory evidence

The proposal includes estimates about pool life, recovered volume and sequential requests. Those are author assertions in the checked record. The page supplies no underlying dataset or calculation workbook.

They may motivate discussion, but they cannot substitute for block-level classification receipts or reconciled pool totals. A forecast concerns what may happen. A receipt concerns what decision was made to a particular block and how that decision altered inventory.

The same separation should hold in future consultation. Debate over expected longevity should not decide the evidential standard for provenance. Even a small recovered volume needs reproducible classification if it changes a policy-governed pool.

Nor should this analysis endorse the proposal’s descriptions of other RIR systems. The narrow question is whether AFRINIC’s own proposed routing rule can be audited from source evidence through destination and aggregate effect.

What the checked record does not prove

The two official pages establish a proposal under discussion and its published text. They do not establish consensus, ratification, implementation or an operative four-pool inventory.

They prove no real recovered block, source-category decision, partial classification, deferral, waiting-list trigger, transfer restriction, correction, appeal or provenance dispute.

They also do not prove misclassification, gaming or deliberate manipulation. The risk mechanism exists even in good-faith administration because historical evidence can be incomplete and aggregate reporting can conceal the path between an individual decision and a closing balance.

The current draft commits to auditable, publicly reportable pool movements and public announcement of classifications. That is a material starting point. The unresolved question is what minimum public object will make those commitments reproducible.

A block-classification receipt answers that question without requiring full operational disclosure. It records only the decision fields needed to identify the block, test the provenance conclusion, reconcile pool movements and follow later consequences.

The next draft’s evidential test

A later version should define reasonable certainty, recognised evidence classes, conflict handling and the authority for first decision, review and correction.

It should require a partial-block crosswalk that conserves every address, a stable public receipt identifier and exact before-and-after totals for each affected pool.

The notice, receipt and monthly report should use the same movement reference. Corrections should reverse or amend balances through linked records rather than overwrite history.

The text should also distinguish initial holding in the Recovered Pool, source-category return and later post-exhaustion supply. The same pool name should not obscure different policy states.

Finally, downstream route markers should show why a 24-month voluntary-transfer restriction did or did not attach, without turning provenance into legal title.

The draft’s innovation is not merely four pools. It makes historical source category decide where scarce inventory goes next. Before that decision changes availability, sequencing or restrictions, AFRINIC should publish one compact answer: the recovered block, evidence state, certainty decision, destination, and pool totals before and after.

Sources