ARIN 51 Day 1 Recap

By Christina Paladeau – Social Media and Content Specialist

A warm “Hello!” from the Sunshine State, where the hybrid ARIN 51 Public Policy and Members Meeting has officially begun! We’re excited to welcome both new and familiar faces joining us in Tampa, Florida, and online for a great lineup of policy discussions, organizational updates, special panels, and more. Read on for a high-level overview of what has happened so far at ARIN 51.

Want to join in the discussions remotely? Register before tomorrow so we can invite you to the Zoom webinar.

RPKI ROA-thon

To start, yesterday our Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) ROA-thon made its return to an ARIN meeting. Onsite participants had a chance to get hands-on experience with creating Route Origin Authorizations (ROAs) to enhance the routing security of their Internet number resources. Senior Product Owner of Routing Security Brad Gorman walked attendees through RPKI, its purpose and key components, and the steps to use ARIN’s hosted RPKI. After the ROA-thon, meeting attendees gathered at an onsite happy hour that provided a great opportunity to catch up before the busy ARIN 51 agenda began this morning.

Day 1 Morning

As the Tampa Bay tide rolled in, Director of Communications and ARIN meeting emcee extraordinaire Hollis Kara launched the first official day of ARIN 51 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 51 network sponsor, Charter Communications, 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 embarking on the morning’s presentations and updates, we heard opening remarks from John Curran, ARIN President and CEO, and Bill Sandiford, Board of Trustees Chair, who both emphasized the importance of community members’ participation in our meetings. Then we received a warm welcome from Dan Schatte, VP of Network Operations for ARIN 51 Network Sponsor Charter Communications.

NANOG Executive Director Edward McNair provided an update on NANOG governance, events, education and mentorship programs, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, development, and community participation. Then John Sweeting, ARIN’s Chief Customer Officer (CCO), gave a Policy Implementation and Experience Report that focused on policies for the IPv4 Waiting List, IPv6 assignments, and efficient utilization. He posed these questions to the community:

• Given the minor differences, does it make sense to consolidate 4.2 (ISPs) and 4.3 (End-users) into a single IPv4 policy and to consolidate 6.5.2 (ISPs) and 6.5.8 (End-users) into a single IPv6 policy?
• Is there a problem with how efficient utilization of previous blocks is determined by 8.5.6, and, if so, would it be fixed by raising or tiering the required utilization percentage?

These questions inspired commentary from both in-person and virtual participants, with multiple community members taking the opportunity to raise additional considerations, provide policy background, and ask follow-up questions to which John Sweeting and John Curran responded.

Presenting the AC Docket Report, Leif Sawyer, Advisory Council (AC) Chair, summarized the policy activity since our last meeting, proposals received, and items that are on the docket at ARIN 51. AC Member Amy Potter was up next with an overview of ARIN’s new Policy Development Process (PDP), which goes into effect starting 1 May 2023. Each step of the PDP now clearly lays out the criteria for advancing to the next step, as well the actions available to the community, the AC, the Board, and ARIN staff. Stay tuned to the ARIN website in the coming weeks or subscribe to the ARIN Announce mailing list for more information on the new PDP and its structure.

Before heading into the first of this meeting’s two policy blocks, we got updates from two AC Working Groups (WG), with AC members sharing about what they do and what they are working on. Chris Tacit discussed the Number Resource Policy Manual (NRPM) WG, which has the goal of clarifying and simplifying Internet number resource policy and recommending relevant updates in the form of policy proposals submitted through the ARIN PDP. Alison Wood discussed the Policy Experience Report (PER) WG, which is responsible for reviewing staff-produced PERs and recommending relevant updates in the form of policy proposals submitted through the ARIN PDP.

Policy Block

Today’s policy discussions took place in two blocks covering everything on the docket for ARIN 51. Advisory Council members presented each of the following draft and recommended draft policies and then opened the floor for community members to provide input (and provide a show of support, in the case of recommended draft policies).

• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2021-8: Deprecation of the ‘Autonomous System Originations’ Field – presented by Anita Nikolich, ARIN AC
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2022-2: Remove Barrier to BGP Uptake in ASN Policy – presented by Kendrick Knowles, ARIN AC
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2022-3: Remove Officer Attestation Requirement for 8.5.5 – presented by Matthew Wilder, ARIN AC
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2022-4: Clean-up of NRPM Sections 2.1 and 2.2 – presented by Alison Woods, ARIN AC
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2022-5: Clean-up of NRPM Section 2.11 – presented by Gus Reese, ARIN AC
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2022-8: Streamlining Section 11 Policy Language – presented by Chris Tacit, ARIN AC
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2022-11: Clean-up of NRPM – Introduction of Section 2.17 – presented by Alison Wood, ARIN AC
• Draft Policy ARIN-2022-12: Direct Assignment Language Update – presented by Douglas Camin, ARIN AC

Lunch and Table Topics

With the first policy block wrapping up early, we had time to fit in another update before heading to lunch. ARIN Community Programs Manager Amanda Gauldin shared an update on the Fellowship and Grant programs as well as ARIN’s ongoing outreach efforts, including a look at industry events attended by ARIN staff and the presentations they’re sharing. The ARIN Community Grant Program has awarded about $185,000 so far in support of 18 projects, and past project reports are available on the ARIN Blog. The next application period opens this Monday, 24 April, and we encourage you to apply if you have a project benefitting the Internet community in the ARIN region that you think would be a good fit. Learn more at arin.net/grants.

During our break for a reenergizing lunch in between the two policy blocks, in-person attendees had the option to gather and discuss topics of interest with ARIN AC and staff members. (Virtual participants will have a chance to join table topic discussions in breakout rooms on Zoom during tomorrow’s lunch.) Today’s table topics included:

• Leasing IP Addresses with Amy Potter, Advisory Council
• IPv4 Waitlist: Transfers and Leasing with Alison Wood, Advisory Council
• Policy in a Post-Pandemic Hybrid World with Anita Nikolich, Advisory Council
• The Future of IPv4 Policy with Chris Woodfield, Advisory Council
• Routing Security with Brad Gorman, Senior Product Owner, Routing Security

Day 1 Afternoon

Once we wrapped up the policy discussions after lunch, Einar Bohlin, VP of Government Affairs, continued the afternoon with an update from the Government Affairs Department (GAD). He covered the GAD team’s areas of focus, interesting developments in international Internet governance from 2022 (including the Declaration for the Future of the Internet and the highly anticipated International Telecommunications Union [ITU] elections), and what the team is monitoring in 2023. Next, Director of Caribbean Affairs Bevil Wooding provided an update on ARIN in the Caribbean, sharing about the outreach, engagement, impact, insights, and upcoming events in that part of our region.

Before heading to a break, ARIN President and CEO John Curran addressed a question raised earlier, during the Government Affairs Department update, regarding who ARIN serves and why it requires requests to be from organizations rather than individuals. John explained that it all comes down to the public nature of ARIN and its records and the goal of protecting the privacy of nonpublic entities.

After a quick stretch and snack break, Chief Technology Officer Mark Kosters presented the report from the Engineering Department. He highlighted recent statistics, software releases, operational improvements, how challenges are evolving over time, and what’s next for the team. Last but definitely not least on Day One, we heard the update from Chief Information Security Officer Christian Johnson. He shared a “Security Year in Review” and details of ARIN’s compliance initiatives, including Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Types 1 and 2 for organizational security and RPKI.

Then we paused for a moment for community members to ask questions or make comments during an open microphone session hosted by John Curran and Bill Sandiford. Topics ranged from mailing list procedures and engagement in the Caribbean to serving organizations vs. individuals. Wrapping up the day, Hollis Kara closed with final announcements and adjournment.

See You Tomorrow

With that, we concluded Day One of ARIN 51. Now we’re off to the ARIN Social tonight where we will network with our fellow meeting attendees and mingle with the underwater residents at The Florida Aquarium.

If you would like to refer to anything you have seen so far, all slides from today have been posted online on our ARIN 51 Meeting Materials page, and, over the next few days, we’ll also add links to the full transcript and webcasts to this page as well.

Please be sure to use the #ARIN51 hashtag on social media when sharing about your meeting experience, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for Day Two of ARIN 51!

Taking photos or screenshots of your ARIN 51 experience? We’d love to share them with the community! Tag, reply, comment, or message us on social media or email us at social@arin.net with images (and photo credit, if needed) that you grant us permission to publish online.

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