The RIPE NCC Executive Board has decided to temporarily restrict members' ability to acquire additional Local Internet Registry (LIR) accounts. Taking effect on Tuesday, 29 September, the restriction also covers requests already in progress. The decision is a first step towards addressing the administrative burden of multiple accounts, while allowing related questions about IPv4 allocations from the IPv4 Waiting List to be discussed within the RIPE community.
What the decision means for members
Following a resolution passed at its recent meeting, the Board has decided to temporarily restrict the acquisition of additional LIR accounts under an existing membership. This includes additional accounts acquired through changes in the business structures of two RIPE NCC members, such as a merger or acquisition between them.
All existing, ongoing or pending requests to open additional LIR accounts are also temporarily suspended.
The resolution does not require members to close or consolidate LIR accounts they already hold. It also does not establish a timetable for phasing out existing accounts. Rather, we will engage with members who hold multiple accounts in order to determine the best way to meet their needs in ways that do not require having more than one LIR account.
If required, the RIPE NCC will provide clarification and support to members that acquired another RIPE NCC member and believe they need to maintain the acquired company's original LIR account. However, this is not required under the current policies and procedures as resources can be transferred to the acquiring party's LIR account at any time following a merger or acquisition.
The Board agreed that the ability to acquire additional LIR accounts should remain restricted until the outcome of related policy discussions is clear.
Why the Board is taking this step
Multiple LIR accounts are used by a small portion of the membership, but supporting them creates substantial technical and administrative overhead. With the RIPE NCC needing to be particularly conscious of costs, the Board considered whether continuing to support and expand this arrangement represents an appropriate use of members' funding.
The data illustrates how limited demand has become. On 1 August 2026, 410 members (2.1% of the membership) held 708 additional LIR accounts. During the preceding two years, 41 members had acquired 67 additional accounts.
The workload extends beyond administering the acquisition of an account (set-up, linking accounts to the same members, etc.). Multiple accounts require extra coordination for billing, compliance checks, allocation of voting rights, audits, transfers and closures, and they complicate systems that need to connect account-level information with member-level records.
Currently, much of this work is handled manually or through separate, standalone solutions, making it difficult and costly to update or extend our systems and services. The Board discussed the significant investment in administrative systems that would be needed to address this complexity. With both the number of additional accounts and demand for new ones falling, and the need to gain efficiencies as we move into a new strategic cycle, it considered this an appropriate time to reassess the arrangement rather than continue adding to it. The Board also discussed the misunderstandings created by the multiple-account model, which is unique to the RIPE NCC among the Regional Internet Registries.
Pausing additional accounts will not, by itself, remove the overhead associated with existing ones. It does, however, prevent further expansion while the RIPE NCC, its members and the RIPE community consider a longer-term approach.
How we reached this point
The background to the whole issue is set out in Marco Schmidt's RIPE Labs article, Multiple LIR Accounts: Looking Back and Thinking Ahead. Multiple accounts initially accommodated administrative convenience for a few members managing separate business entities or undergoing mergers. IPv4 scarcity later created incentives to open accounts for further allocations. While the RIPE IPv4 policy intended the remaining IPv4 space to be provided to newcomers, RIPE policies generally use the term LIR when referring to eligible parties, while in the RIPE NCC's operating model, a single member can have multiple LIR accounts.
The question now is therefore not whether members were wrong to use a facility that was available to them. It is whether retaining that facility remains justified, given its declining use and the administrative burden and complexity it creates.
IPv4 policy and the IPv4 Waiting List
Under the current Waiting List rules, an eligible LIR account can receive one /24 allocation, provided it has never previously received an IPv4 allocation from the RIPE NCC and addresses become available. Eligibility is therefore assessed at the LIR account level.
Restricting additional accounts restricts the means by which an existing member could open another account to request a further allocation. However, the Board's resolution does not itself amend the IPv4 allocation policy or determine what future eligibility should be.
The Board discussed the need for the RIPE community to consider this explicitly. For example, the IPv4 policy could more explicitly reflect its original intent to reserve the remaining IPv4 space for newcomers only. Alternatively, the community could discuss whether existing members should also be eligible to receive additional IPv4 space through the waiting list.
These are questions for the RIPE Policy Development Process. The Board's decision to restrict additional accounts is not intended to limit the possible outcomes of that process.
What happens next
The Board will include this topic in its Board report to members at the upcoming General Meeting and it welcomes input from the membership. The RIPE NCC will also contact members that hold multiple LIR accounts to assess whether their needs can be met in different ways that don't require multiple accounts.
The Board's discussion identified phasing out multiple LIR accounts as a longer-term direction. However, the adopted resolution establishes a temporary restriction, not a final decision on how or when existing accounts would be phased out. Further steps will need to address the implications for members that use multiple accounts, the related policy questions, and the financial and administrative consequences of changing the model.
The purpose of this pause is to stop adding complexity while those questions are addressed. With demand for additional accounts declining and pressure to use members' funding efficiently, the Board considers this the right time to work towards a simpler arrangement while keeping decisions about IPv4 allocation policy with the RIPE community. Ultimately, we believe that completely phasing out multiple LIR accounts will render the distinction between members and LIRs unimportant. Policy text referring to LIRs would match the operational structures within the RIPE NCC, community intention would be easily translated to RIPE NCC procedures, and there would be a clear and common understanding of what it means to be a member of any RIR.
If you have comments on the proposed changes, please comment below or join the discussion on the Members Discuss mailing list.
Comments 5
Marcus Jackson •
If cost is the driving factor here, was raising the cost of additional LIR accounts discussed as an approach? This seems like by far the most straightforward approach, but there's no mention of it.
Gabor de Wit •
Thanks for that comment, Marcus. While a higher fee would probably discourage most members from adding LIR accounts, this would not address the technical and administrative overhead caused by having multiple LIR accounts. The underlying complexity would remain as long as the facility exists. Even if only a single member continues to use multiple accounts, or if the option exists, we would still need to maintain the systems and processes to support this setup. Those costs would ultimately be paid by the whole membership rather than being covered by the very small number of members still using the option. Instead, by removing this complexity and simplifying matters for our development teams and administration, it would bring much-needed efficiency gains and cost savings for all.
Marcus Jackson •
Gabor, my thinking wasn't to use the cost to discourage, but to use the additional fee to actually pay the cost of maintaining additional accounts. However, you haven't quantified here what that additional cost is, or why it is so disproportionate and onerous. Is the problem simply that additional accounts are being handled as one-offs rather than a core aspect of business? Is this instead a development project an appropriate fee structure could support? Your argument is cost based, but you're not showing the math behind your reasoning.
Gabor de Wit •
Excellent questions indeed. The answer to your initial question is yes: multiple LIR accounts ended up being something that was bolted onto our offering and its fee structure was used to cover the one-off cost and to cover parts of the administration that we have for maintaining the link between the multiple LIR accounts and the member holding them. Throughout our services, the increased complexity of multiple LIR accounts can be felt: from ARCs to transfers, to our monitoring of resource holders in the domain of KYC, overall accuracy and continued due diligence. This brings me to your second point on the development aspect: yes, with unlimited time and money there is always a possibility to fully incorporate any type of offering into our service portfolio (famous last words). Despite not being a commercial organisation, the RIPE NCC should periodically evaluate whether it wants to keep offering certain services versus discontinuing them in favour of bringing efficiencies and using the member fees more effectively. That is for us the main rationale to not start this major project to incorporate a flawed offering, but instead focus on the road ahead. By validating with current members what they truly need, by aligning the member set-up with other RIRs, and by requesting the community to seriously consider a revamp of the IPv4 allocation policy that also affected the original multiple LIR account discussion.
Remco van Mook •
There is a governance reason for multiple LIR accounts that deserves to be mentioned. Under the last /8 policy, the limit of one block per LIR encouraged people to register additional companies, each becoming a separate RIPE NCC member. In an association built on one member, one vote, that meant an incentive to acquire more IPv4 space was also an incentive to accumulate voting power. Allowing multiple LIR accounts under a single membership was a necessary remedy: it kept workarounds to address policy from distorting the membership and destabilising the association. That distinction served a purpose. Today it is largely ornamental, and I support retiring it. We should just make sure the replacement does not recreate the incentive that made it necessary.