ARIN V Members Meeting Minutes - Calgary, Alberta, Canada [Archived]

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Call to Order

At 9:00, the meeting was called to order with Board members John Curran, Kim Hubbard, Scott Bradner, Mike Straty, David Conrad, and Scott Marcus in attendance. AC members present included Alec Peterson, Bill Darte, Cathy Wittbrodt, Jeremy Porter, Dave Whipple, Guy Middleton, Ron Roberts, and Mark Kosters. Kim opened the meeting with announcements and a special thanks to Shaw for hosting the previous evening’s activity.

Adoption of the Agenda

A review of the agenda yielded no discussion and was accepted without change.

Board of Trustees Summary

John Curran, Chairman of the Board, welcomed all those in attendance and described some of the achievements since the last Members Meeting, including: subscribers now automatically become members, the database was converted to Oracle, the Y2K compliance effort went smoothly, and the RIRs signed an MoU with ICANN.

Advisory Council Overview

Alec Peterson, AC Chairman, described AC activities such as review of nondisclosure of personal information for residential DSL customers, and IP allocation policy changes. It was noted that more /20s are appearing than ARIN has allocated due to downstream customers announcing them. The Routing Table Measurement and Analysis (RTMA) working group is quantifying the growth of the routing tables due to ARIN’s change in policy from a minimum allocation of /19 to /20.

Treasurer’s Report

ARIN’s new treasurer, Mike Straty, presented ARIN’s statements of financial activities and financial position. He outlined expenses by department, explained ARIN’s use of the waterfall schedule in determining revenue, and showed revenue distribution generated by registration services, membership fees, and other sources. Some funds will be placed in reserve and some are slated to support ICANN. It was pointed out that ARIN is relatively debt free.

A question was raised as to how ARIN’s positive cash flow might influence its fee structure. John said that some of the revenue could go to new initiatives, and that it is important to have some reserve for any potential legal costs. Plus, it is the Board’s goal to accrue 1 year of operating expense. Once ARIN meets its goals, the fee schedule will be reviewed by the members, AC, and Board. Kim pointed out that ARIN has been very prudent in its first 2 years of operation, and that expenditures will likely increase over the next year due to new initiatives. Other efforts such as our planned database migration will probably draw funds from our reserves. Attendees expressed an interest in providing a brief summary of the budget vs financial data.

Some suggested designating funds for community outreach, and to provide staff for continuous development needs. Bill Darte told the group that several volunteers have offered support for outreach, and he will put their comments and ideas on the CLEW mailing list. John suggested that we might need to provide staff for CLEW-type efforts, and Kim suggested the possibility of using consultants. She asked members to get more involved in the documentation process.

As part of the RIRs’ project to separate legacy IP space, each RIR will be responsible for maintaining reverse delegation. This will be a new responsibility for ARIN. Plans are coming together to provide servers in four locations nationwide to support these in-addr activities. There have been several offers to provide funds for collocating the servers. Kim said that we will follow the RFP process and report back to the members.

ARIN/ICANN Contract Update

Scott Bradner described the most critical points of the contract, the duties, and the rights and responsibilities of each party.

The contract recognizes ICANN as the arbiter for global policy, but asserts that the corporation must make sure its decisions are based on the RIRs’ expertise and support. A dispute resolution policy is structured in a hierarchical manner patterned after both ARIN’s and ICANN’s policies. If a dispute arises, ICANN must continue to provide IP addresses to the RIRs until the issue is resolved.

ICANN will get most of its funding from the domain name side of the business. A meeting is expected to be held with ICANN by the end of the month to start negotiations. ICANN can increase its budget during the term of the contract. If it does so, ARIN will present the requested change to its members for consideration.

As suggested by attendees, topics such as recovering IP space and use of multicast addresses will be discussed further for possible inclusion in the contract. The importance of the members’ support of this contract was noted. The majority of attendees felt that the contract points as presented encompassed a reasonable set of principles.

Other Discussions

Kim asked for a show of hands on whether to change ARIN’s policy on upgrades as discussed on the previous day. The majority was in favor.

The number of organizational transfers have been increasing. Whether this is due to organizations not having to justify space, or because the fee is minimal, is not clear. Members were asked to be thinking about whether ARIN’s transfer policy should be changed. Statistics on the number of transfers will be provided in the future.

As an aside, Gene Jakominich announced that he and Alec Peterson are starting a new organization for combining skiing with BOFs to be held several times a year. You can visit their web site at www.skigeeks.net or contact Gene or Alec. A mailing list will be created for the group.

Closing Remarks

Kim again expressed appreciation for Shaw’s hosting of this 3-day event. Organizations serving as hosts are very helpful in setting up these meetings, and for providing important conveniences such as laptop connectivity. The invitation is open for anyone interested in hosting ARIN’s next meeting in October 2000.

Alec Peterson made an impromptu presentation to Kim for her service as the ARIN President.

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