A provider-independent address space (PI) is a block of IP addresses assigned by a regional Internet registry (RIR) directly to an end-user organization.
Provider-independent addresses offer end-users the opportunity to change service providers without renumbering of their networks and to use multiple access providers in a multi-homed configuration.
However, provider-independent blocks may increase the burden on global routers, as the opportunity for efficient route aggregation through Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) may not exist.
IPv4 Provider-aggregatable (PA) Address space can only be allocated to RIPE NCC members.
[3] In April 2009 RIPE accepted a policy proposal of January 2006 to assign IPv6 provider-independent IPv6 prefixes.