ARIN 50 Day 1 Recap

By Christina Paladeau – Social Media and Content Specialist

Greetings from Tinseltown! The hybrid ARIN 50 Public Policy and Members Meeting began today, and we’re thrilled to welcome new and returning participants both in person in Hollywood, California, and virtually. Want to join in the discussions remotely? Register before tomorrow so we can invite you to the Zoom meeting.

In the meantime, here’s a highlight reel of everything that took place on Day 1 of ARIN 50.

Happy (Foosball) Hour

To kick off ARIN 50 (pun intended), attendees greeted one another Wednesday evening at an onsite Happy Hour that provided a great opportunity to catch up before the busy meeting agenda began this morning. In celebration of ARIN’s 50th meeting, we brought back a beloved tradition — foosball! The competition was sometimes fierce, sometimes farcical, but entirely entertaining. And the winning team was … “Who Cares?” Congrats to Leif Sawyer, Advisory Council Chair, and his teammate on achieving ARIN meeting celebrity status!

Action!

Thursday morning greeted us warm and sunny in typical California fashion as we began the first official day of the meeting. Hollis Kara, Director of Communications, set the scene with opening announcements, introductions of our Board of Trustees, Advisory Council (AC), and the Number Resource Organization Number Council (NRO NC), and an overview of the meeting agenda. She also offered thanks to our ARIN 50 network sponsor, Zayo, webcast sponsor, Google, and bronze sponsor, IPv4.Global, along with tips for both virtual and in-person attendees to make the most of their meeting experience.

Before cutting to the morning’s presentations and updates, we received a warm video welcome from Aaron Werley, VP of Technology at Zayo, followed by opening remarks from John Curran, ARIN President and CEO, and Bill Sandiford, Board of Trustees Chair.

John Sweeting, Chief Customer Officer (CCO), gave a Policy Implementation and Experience Report that examined the eligibility criteria, data and trends, and potential options for changing procedures for IPv4 address space issued via the ARIN Waiting List and needs-based source transfers. He posed questions to the community about those potential options, asking if ARIN should:

• Do nothing, making no changes to current practices?
• Lower the max block size and/or lower maximum holdings?
• Allow needs-based source transfers?
• Allow small needs-based recipient transfers to remove an org from the waiting list?
• Allow any retroactive policy changes? Join the discussion at the meeting or on our Public Policy mailing list (PPML) to let us know what you think.

Next up, Mark Kosters, Chief Technology Officer, presented a report from the Engineering Department that highlighted recent statistics, software releases, operational improvements, challenges, and what’s next. This included the latest data on Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) adoption rates for ARIN Online accounts; since announcing the addition of the SMS/Voice Call option in August 2022, we’ve seen a significant jump in 2FA use among customers. As a reminder, October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so it’s the perfect time to enable or update 2FA for your account if you haven’t already!

Then it was onto our Services Update, with Joe Westover, Sr. Manager - CCO Office, discussing our Premier Support Plan — which several customers have opted into since it was offered to all customers as of 8 August — and Registration Services Agreement (RSA) changes, along with Routing Security and RPKI growth and new features in the works, available online training, and recent and upcoming services prioritization and customer satisfaction surveys.

Rounding out the day one organizational presentations, Richard Jimmerson, Chief Operations Officer, shared an Operations Update that highlighted organization staff and services. ARIN currently employs 97 staff and the 2022 work plan is fully engaged, with the transition from pandemic operations to a new hybrid workforce model completed in July 2022 and outreach and meeting participation mostly returned to in-person. We continue to make enhancements to ARIN Online, internal tools, and RPKI offerings — including voluntary pursuit of SOC 2 compliance — to facilitate customer service and security as demand for registry services continues to grow. Keep an eye out for expanded payment options as we update our payment contractor and the resumption of the in-person component of the ARIN Fellowship Program for the ARIN 51 hybrid meeting in Tampa, Florida.

Richard offered congratulations to the 2022 ARIN Community Grant recipients — DNS-OARC, DNS Research Federation, and Network Time Foundation, Inc. — whose projects are working to improve the Internet and make positive contributions to the Internet community in the ARIN region. Click here to learn more about them, the program, and how to apply.

Presenting the AC Docket Report, Leif Sawyer, Advisory Council (AC) Chair, summarized the policy activity since our last meeting, proposals received, and the dozen items on the docket during the three policy sessions taking place during ARIN 50. Then it was time for a quick stretch and snack break (where a make-your-own trail mix bar was met with rave reviews), before entering the day’s policy block.

Meanwhile, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback at a Registration Services Help Desk, ARIN Elections Help Desk, and User Experience Desk hosted by ARIN staff. Visitors to the User Experience Desk were able to test drive upcoming features and provide feedback to help us improve existing ones.

Policy Block, Take 1

During today’s policy discussions, Advisory Council members presented each policy and then opened the floor for community members to provide input on the following draft and recommended draft policies:

• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2020-6: Allowance for IPv4 Allocation “Swap” Transactions via 8.3 Specified Transfers and 8.4 Inter-RIR Transfers — Presented by Rob Seastrom
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2022-1: MDN Clarification for Qualification — Presented by Chris Woodfield
• Draft Policy ARIN 2021-7: Make Abuse Contact Useful — Presented by Amy Potter
• Draft Policy ARIN 2021-8: Deprecation of the ‘Autonomous System Originations’ Field — Presented by Alicia Trotman

Since we wrapped up policy discussions ahead of schedule, we fit in an extra presentation before breaking for lunch. John Sweeting reviewed the NRO’s latest Internet Number Resource Status Report, which was just released this morning, 20 October.

ARIN Elections — Meet your Candidates!

After an intermission for a tasty lunch and time to chat with colleagues, the ARIN Election Forum began with John Sweeting, Chief Customer Officer, providing an overview of all things ARIN Elections. He reviewed where you can find all election info online, who can vote, and how and when to vote, including an introduction to the new election system we’re using this year.

Following that, we heard speeches from the candidates who are running for the ARIN Board of Trustees, Advisory Council (AC), and the Number Resource Organization Number Council (NRO NC). Once the speeches concluded, we paused for a break before settling back in for the Candidate Forums hosted by a third-party, impartial moderator — Paul Marshall, Partner at Boyden.

The AC candidates were up first, with Paul asking them three questions submitted and ranked by the ARIN community. All seven candidates were present either in person or virtually, and each had two minutes to answer each of these questions:

• What experience do you have with ARIN registry policy development?
• What is the biggest challenge, technical or otherwise, that you see on the horizon for ARIN? How would you see this challenge tackled?
• What purpose does the IPv4 Waiting List policy serve, and why shouldn’t it just be a single /24 “austerity” policy like in other regions?

We will be posting the recording of the AC Candidate panel tomorrow, so please check back on the ARIN 50 Meeting Materials page to access the video.

After the AC candidates delivered their answers, we had some time to spare before the Board Candidate Forum’s scheduled start. So, John Curran took the stage to share the presentation he delivered earlier this week at NANOG 86. He provided a summary of ongoing global developments in the Internet Number Registry System with potential for operational effects and the steps ARIN has taken to help promote ongoing stability of the overall system.

Then it was back to our regularly scheduled programming, with Paul Marshall moderating the forum for the Board of Trustees candidates. He posed these four questions submitted and ranked by the ARIN community:

• In the ARIN region, do you feel that parties should be able to receive transfers of IPv4 address blocks if they only intend to use them to lease to others?
• No organization is perfect in its operations. How would you make ARIN’s operations — good and bad — more transparent to membership?
• Roughly 6% of ARIN’s budget in 2022 is earmarked for Travel/Meetings. During the pandemic we have learned not all interactions could be replaced virtually; however, many, many could. Given the pandemic “virtual” experiences, what strategy should ARIN have on evaluating what travel brings good value for the cost to the organization and community?
• How should ARIN treat facilitators — as important customers or just unavoidable parties involved in some transactions?

All seven candidates were present either in person or virtually and were given two minutes to answer each question. Again, you can visit the ARIN 50 Meeting Materials page to view the video recording of the Board Candidate Forum when it is published tomorrow.

Thanks to our Board of Trustees, Advisory Council, and NRO NC candidates for participating. Voting is now open and closes at 7:00 PM ET next Friday, 28 October. Be sure to cast your vote and fulfill a vital community responsibility by helping shape the future of ARIN and the Internet as a whole!

Flipping the Script

We followed the Election Forum with an Open Microphone session hosted by John Curran and Bill Sandiford for community members to pose questions or comments on any topic. Comments and questions hit on topics from community working groups, transparency of ARIN Elections, and more. Wrapping up the day, John Curran closed with final announcements and adjournment.

Aaaannd Scene

With that, day one of ARIN 50 was in the books. Now we’re off to the ARIN Social tonight where we will network with our fellow meeting attendees and strike a pose with a few A-List celebrities, superheroes and stars from the golden era of cinema at Madame Tussauds Hollywood wax museum.

If you would like to refer to anything you have seen (or missed) so far, all slides from today have been posted online on our ARIN 50 Meeting Materials page, and, over the next few days, we’ll also add links to the full transcript and webcasts.

We’ll see you back here tomorrow for the second and final day of ARIN 50. Spoiler alert: there are a lot more policies to discuss. And don’t forget to use the #ARIN50 hashtag and tag us @TeamARIN on Twitter and Facebook and @ARIN on LinkedIn when sharing about your meeting experience on social media!

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