There will be no new National Internet Registries (NIRs) in the APNIC region following a decision from the APNIC Executive Council (EC) to make the existing 12-year moratorium on new NIR applications permanent.
At its recent meeting in Bangkok in February, the EC resolved to deprecate the document ‘APNIC-104 Criteria for the recognition of NIRs in the APNIC region’ regarding new NIR applicants, with immediate effect.
Importantly, the change will not affect the existing NIRs:
- APJII (ID)
- CNNIC (CN)
- IRINN (IN)
- JPNIC (JP)
- KISA (KR)
- TWNIC (TW)
- VNNIC (VN)
NIRs are a historical feature of the APNIC membership structure, recognizing that some IP address registries were already operating at a national or economy level when APNIC started, and some were in formation. The APNIC NIR structure was defined in 1996, bringing these existing registries into the APNIC membership structure, and allowing new ones to be recognized. Even so, two existing registries, AUNIC and NZNIC decided at the time not to continue, and to transfer resource management responsibilities to APNIC.
NIRs are not run by APNIC. They are separate, non-profit entities, incorporated according to the laws of where they are based, and have their own memberships. NIRs can have their own policies that apply to their members, but those policies must not conflict with regional and global address policies. Existing NIRs must have interoperable systems with APNIC and must, to the extent permitted by local laws, guarantee freedom of network operators in their economy to choose between APNIC and the NIR.
In the past, particularly while IPv4 address space was being rapidly allocated and needed careful management, NIRs provided important support to a fast-growing Internet with high demand for number resources and registry services.
However, since the original moratorium on new NIR applications was passed in February 2012, the concrete benefits and the sustainability of new NIRs have declined.
In consideration of all of these factors, the EC determined that the provisions for new NIRs, described in ‘APNIC-104 Criteria for the recognition of NIRs in the APNIC region’ should be deprecated. This reflects the EC’s expectation that no additional NIRs will be formed in future within the APNIC region.
More information on NIRs is available on the APNIC website.
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