Summary

  • APNIC kept a small IPv4 reserve for networks arriving after the main supply ran out. Tomohiro Fujisaki saw that a member could receive a slice of 103/8 and transfer it through a rule written for ordinary holdings.
  • His prop-116 began as a ban, became a two-year wait, and won consensus at APNIC 44 only after the room made that wait five years. APNIC implemented it in November 2017.
  • The clock starts at original delegation. It covers merger and acquisition transfers too; a block whose original need disappears during the wait goes back to APNIC. The current APNIC rule retains that five-year hold.

The last shelf had a side door

The sign on APNIC's last IPv4 shelf effectively read: one small helping, so the next network can still get online. Yet the exit led straight into the ordinary transfer market. A member could receive a block from 103/8, then move it elsewhere. APNIC's 2016 account described the obvious temptation: open fresh accounts, collect the limited blocks, fold them into an existing operation. A rationing rule is less impressive when the checkout line leads to another checkout line.

Tomohiro Fujisaki put his name on prop-116. Its public revisions show the hard work between a tempting slogan and an enforceable rule. Version one in September 2016 sought an outright bar on transferring addresses from the Final /8. It failed to win consensus at APNIC 42. By the APNIC 43 meeting in March 2017, the proposal had a two-year hold. That version failed too. The room wanted a better answer to the exit problem.

The room changed the timer

At APNIC 44 in September 2017, the critical edit happened in the meeting. The community asked Fujisaki to lengthen two years to five; he agreed. The revised version also dropped a sentence that would have ended the restriction when 103/8 ran out. APNIC's meeting outcome records both changes. Version six then passed the Policy SIG and the member meeting. The Executive Council briefly froze affected transfers while the outcome settled, according to the official outcome paper. APNIC implemented the rule on 20 November 2017.

Five years is a peculiar compromise if the choice is framed as “property or prohibition.” It makes more sense as a test of the original allocation. A new entrant can use its starter block; an account opened only to pass the block on has to wait long enough for that plan to become costly. APNIC's implementation record says the rule did not undo completed transfers. Even a holder who had received a transferred 103/8 block, however, could not pass it onward before five years from original delegation. Changing hands did not reset the clock.

The current APNIC policy still applies that minimum five-year hold to blocks delegated from the 103/8 free pool. APNIC's transfer conditions include mergers and acquisitions. When the original reason for obtaining a block expires during the hold, it returns to APNIC. One timed condition now guards one reserve, with a date the registry can check. APNIC has not published a count of opportunistic transfers this clock prevented.

Original records