ARIN VII Public Policy Meeting - San Franciso, California - 2-3 April 2001 [Archived]

Minutes of Public Policy Meeting Day 1 - April 2

Ray Plzak, ARIN President, opened the first day of ARIN’s Public Policy Meeting at 9:00 a.m. welcoming all those in attendance, thanking Global Crossing for hosting the meeting, making a few announcements, and recognizing the winners of the foosball tournament held the previous night. Ray introduced the ARIN Board of Trustees, all of whom were in attendance, as well as John Crain from ICANN. Attendees were asked to read ARIN’s newly published Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process available at the registration desk and http://www.arin.net/announcements/policy_eval_process.html . The agenda was adopted without change and the meeting proceeded.

Registration Services

Leslie Nobile, RSG Director, provided an update on RSG activities. She highlighted changes to SWIP processing that reduced processing time from 48 to less than 36 hours. The backlog for transfer requests has been eliminated and response time now falls within 2 to 3 days. ARIN will be posting response times to IP requests on its statistics webpage. After presenting statistics for IPv4, IPv6, and ASNs, she announced that RSG has expanded its hours of operation, and is now open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Engineering

Ginny Listman, Engineering Director, spoke about the efforts of her staff. They were responsible for refining the SWIP process and have been working with the other RIRs to coordinate the release of statistics. Major projects include a new billing system, clean up of the WHOIS database, first phase of testing with new DNS service host, and the design phase of the internal data conversion project. Engineering sent out templates for networks with a single in-addr server. To date, there has been a limited response. Ginny encouraged people to check their networks and to respond if they have single in-addr servers. On other topics, new draft templates have been developed and are available for review at ftp://ftp.arin.net/pub/proposed . Under development is a system that will allow credit card payments to be made for address allocations. Other future projects and the number of WHOIS queries were discussed.

Member Services

Susan Hamlin, Director Member Services, introduced the Member Services staff and provided membership statistics. She described projects currently underway, such as website redesign, development of a members-only web page, support for CLEW activities, and publication of a quarterly newsletter.

Business and Administration

Bob Stratton, Director Business and Administration, announced plans to purchase a new accounting system. This system will allow for customization, reduce redundancy, improve productivity, and in the future interface seamlessly with the new Oracle database. Bob explained that by the end of 2001, customers will be able to pay for all ARIN services by credit card. He also provided an update on the impending office relocation, with a target date of 4th quarter this year. In an effort to improve employee retention, ARIN has expanded its benefits package.

Global Coordination

Richard Jimmerson, ARIN Director of Operations, reported on the joint activities among the RIRs. In particular:

• Reviewing IPv6 requests.
• Transferring “early address registrations” from ARIN’s database to the appropriate RIR.
• Coordinating the presentation of RIR statistics.
• Developing a policy comparison document that will be posted soon.
• Making presentations at various industry meetings.
• Holding periodic planning workshops.

ARIN staff attends monthly teleconference meetings of the ASO AC. The ASO secretariat provides administrative support for the ASO AC and responsibility for carrying out the function rotates among the RIRs on an annual basis. It provides administrative support for the ASO AC. ARIN will serve as the secretariat next year.

ARIN regularly attends industry meetings to keep informed about new requirements for IP address space. For example, at a recent GSM meeting it was reaffirmed that the need for IP addresses is expanding to include items such as hand-held appliances. Other planned activities include providing tutorials at future NANOG meetings.

ASO AC Report

Raimundo Becca, one of ARIN’s elected ASO AC members, reported on the activities of the ASO AC since the last ARIN Public Policy meeting. His presentation included a timetable of events, meeting summaries, a procedures flowchart, and other updated information. He indicated that the ICANN Board declared the work of the Ad Hoc group completed, and referred a report by Mark McFadden and Tony Holmes (http://www.icann.org) to the ASO AC.

He touched on the highlights of several meetings, including an ASO AC/ICANN Workshop held in Brisbane, which included discussions about the MoU. He explained that the ASO AC mailing list is open to the public as read only, that posting to the list is only for AC members.

ICANN Update

Louis Touton, ICANN Vice President, reviewed the ICANN organization, staff personnel, statistics relating to IANA’s workload, and recent events. He indicated that improvements have been made to templates, their system, and IANA’s processing times. The ICANN website is being reworked. The implementation of the root server system architecture improvements has been extended for 6 months.

Objectives for the remainder of the year include completion of ICANN’s structure, and working with emerging RIRs. The formalization of agreements and relationships with RIRs and other groups is about halfway completed. ICANN is also in the process of transitioning InterNIC functions to ICANN.

Oscar Robles, a member of the ICANN At-Large Membership Study Committee (ALSC), provided an overview of the ALSC and its responsibility for establishing a means for all to participate in ICANN’s activities. Ten or more events are planned worldwide as part of an outreach effort to build consensus. A final report is due to the ICANN Board by November 14, 2001. All are encouraged to participate in this process via http://www.atlargestudy.org or comments@atlargestudy.org . A website will be opening soon to support on-line forum activities.

RIPE NCC Update

Axel Pawlik, RIPE NCC Managing Director, reported that their activities continue to increase. The registry has expanded into additional office space and employs 67 full-time employees representing 23 nationalities. Significant growth in number of memberships created a substantial increase in workload. Some 50 training courses providing instruction to 1,500 attendees are planned for 2001. Cleanup and migration of database continues.

New projects include a routing information service, security infrastructures, and a test traffic measurements service that employs 50 test boxes worldwide. A brochure for this service was made available. The next RIPE NCC meeting will begin April 30, 2001 in Bologna, Italy.

APNIC Update

APNIC Communications Coordinator Gerard Ross stated that APNIC membership and number of allocations has been increasing dramatically, with the largest growth occurring in the number of large and very large customers. Address policy and fee structure changes took place last year, and “member services” is expanding. The minimum allocation of IP addresses is now /20.

The registry has been making system upgrades and policy changes, and is offering authentication and authorization certificates on a trial basis. Due to a large cable rollout in Korea, there has been a tremendous upsurge in IPv4 allocations in that country. The bulk of IPv6 allocations reside in Japan due to their government’s support. APNIC’s IPv6 status reports are posted on their website.

Over the past 2 years, the staff has increased from 6 to 22. A new technical manager will start soon. Plans are developing for a customized member website entitled MyAPNIC. APNIC will continue to hold one meeting a year with APRICOT. The next meeting (APNIC-12) will begin August 28, 2001 in Taipei.

LACNIC

German Valdez, LACNIC interim board member, described LACNIC’s progress toward becoming fully operational. They are working on meeting the requirements stated in the Emerging RIR Document. The draft bylaws and draft policy document have been completed. LACNIC intends to follow the ARIN model for its funding plan. They are also ramping up technical expertise, staff, and an operational infrastructure. In support, members of ARIN’s staff are expected to visit the proposed site of the LACNIC facility. English will be LACNIC’s official language; however, meetings will be simultaneously translated in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. LACNIC’s next effort will be to give presentations at the next two ICANN meetings.

AFRINIC

Mouhamet Diop, AFRINIC representative, described the six subregions within AFRINIC’s proposed area of responsibility. The registry will operate using one language as the standard. Each subregion elects two representatives to the Board, a primary and an alternate from different language groups. Mouhamet described the activities of the registry in preparation for startup and indicated that more than 150 people attended a meeting in Banjul.

A General Assembly will be held in May 2001 in Accra. This will be a very important meeting and an opportunity to seek technical staff, which Mouhamet said is a difficult task. To ensure continuing service for the region’s ISPs, the startup period will be facilitated by RIPE NCC.

Database Working Group

A discussion on whether a downstream customer should register it’s information prior to receiving resources from its upstream was led by Ginny Listman. Concern was expressed as to whether the data would be cleaner as suggested. It was requested that the database be searchable not only for organization name, but for city as well, that the SWIP template include the downstream maintainer ID, and that maintainer IDs be consistent among all the RIRs. Ginny asked for a show of hands whether to allow the downstream to register, but not require it: ~30 were in favor, none were opposed. According to Ginny, the online request form that will be developed for the ARIN site will have some automation.

Since RWHOIS and SWIP are not compatible, what can an organization do if it wants to use SWIP yet its upstream provider uses RWHOIS? A suggestion was made that ARIN allocate the resources necessary to develop RWHOIS. Ray deferred the discussion to the open microphone session.

ARIN will use ISO 3166 for accepting country code information. Whether to also provide for recognition of country code aliases, and to what extent, was discussed. It is planned that ARIN will accept two-character, three-character and full name entries. All three versions will be converted to the two-character ISO code. Among the suggestions and questions from the floor:

• Prompt the requester immediately when an error is detected.
• Recognize only the most commonly used aliases.
• Recognize only those entries following the ISO standard.
• Create a separate table to recognize aliases.

Ginny indicated that ARIN would prefer to recognize only the standard codes and send a rejection notice for codes not recognized. At a show of hands, a majority was in agreement, with no opposition, for disallowing aliases to be used and notifying requestor of inaccurate designations.

New templates are available for review (see ftp://ftp.arin.net/pub/proposed ). Each template will have the capability to process new submittals, modifications, and deletes. In-addrs will no longer require an address, only the DNS name. For organizations that would like more than one Maintainer ID, they must register their Parent Organization. John Curran suggested that ARIN document how these templates work under varying scenarios. Ginny requested all interested parties to provide comments regarding the templates to dbwg@arin.net by May 1. ARIN plans to utilize some of the templates by early fall. A request was also made for beta testers.

On the subject of authorization and privacy of data input, Ray suggested that some information should be made public, and some available to members only, but this needs to be determined. This topic will be posted to mailing lists. When asked, ICANN had no recommendation.

Early Registrations

Richard Jimmerson led a discussion about registrations in ARIN’s database that were allocated before ARIN was formed. Only a few attendees indicated that they were familiar with this issue. This effort involves transferring registrations that do not reside in ARIN’s region to their respective RIR. In situations where registrations for parent organizations reside in ARIN’s region and some of their child organizations are located in other regions, both the parent and child registrations will remain with ARIN. In cases where a /8 is shared by more than one RIR, the in-addr.arpa domain zone file for that /8 will be maintained by the RIR that holds the largest portion of the /8. The other RIRs will send updated information for their blocks. Initially, database update messages and secure copy will be used for updating shared zones. Richard stated that current plans call for contacting only the affected organizations. It was suggested that this information be more widely disseminated.

In preparation, RIPE is in the process of looking for inconsistencies in a data dump. Richard indicated that ARIN will transfer the /8s one at a time. Ray added that two vendors (for redundancy) have been selected to provide the name servers for the /8 domains. Testing has begun.

Richard indicated that ARIN will provide information showing which RIR will have in-addr responsibility for each /8. Should ARIN directly contact the organizations involved and make announcements on the ftp site? Seven attendees indicated they would like for an announcement to be posted to mailing lists, and four indicated they prefer individual notification. An attendee said that this is a policy change and that the members should be notified. There was no consensus as to whether ARIN should describe the process on its website. Richard stated that ARIN will publish this information by making it available to the organizations affected.

WHOIS AUP

Richard Jimmerson explained that the purpose of a WHOIS AUP is to reduce the number of queries and to provide guidelines for research organizations using bulk WHOIS data. ARIN currently receives ~5 requests per week. It is expected that the database will be updated approximately once a week. It is not certain whether an AUP will help to increase the speed of WHOIS. One attendee indicated that occasionally WHOIS has an accessibility problem. Richard said ARIN will look into it.

Data may include specific categories, such as list of names, and other subsets. ARIN does not currently provide this data in bulk. In the event of WHOIS abuse, only entities that flood WHOIS (by ~10 queries per second) are cut off. ARIN indicated that the maximum acceptable rate of queries is not currently posted on the website. Mirjam Kuehne, RIPE NCC Manager External Relations, said that RIPE contacts the organization making the request, and requires them to sign an AUP. Gerard Ross indicated that APNIC separates their databases by country.

Suggestions included establishing a method of verifying the legitimacy of queries, adding a creation date for the database, and publishing the name of the AUP signatory. The suggestion that requesting organizations should fund the resources required to maintain the database garnered both support and opposition. Obtaining grant money was suggested. Scott Bradner noted that it is ARIN’s duty to provide this data to research institutions if economically feasible. John Curran suggested that the database could be considered public information and the community has collective rights to it. ARIN will look at how to fund this service. Additional comments included providing it in RPSL or similar format, standardizing the format among the RIRs, and deferring this discussion to the Members Meeting.

Virtual Webhosting

Alec Peterson, Chairman of the ARIN Advisory Council, began a discussion of ARIN’s virtual webhosting policy. About half of the audience indicated they were in attendance for the webhosting discussions at the fall 2000 ARIN Public Policy meetings.

Alec provided a history of the discussion and action that took place last fall, leading to the suspension of the policy by the Board of Trustees. The AC has since reworded the policy into a guideline to make the use of name-based webhosting a recommendation, not a requirement. The draft language was posted to the public policy mailing list for comments, which the AC will consider before making any recommendation to the Board. Meeting attendees provided the following comments:

• Require organizations to follow the guideline. If they can’t, they should state why.
• Consider how this guideline will affect organizations requesting additional address space. If the company has multiple webhosting customers, how will it’s justification data be viewed?
• Provide a cutoff date, e.g. 1 year, after which the policy will become mandatory.

A list of possible exceptions to this policy compiled by the AC grew so long that it provided too many ways for organizations to circumvent the guideline. Bill Darte stated that these exceptions will be reviewed.

The recommended new wording for the guideline from the AC was read aloud. Several suggestions were offered, namely, that the guideline should: state that organizations must provide technical reasons for exceptions, list the legitimate reasons and those not considered legitimate for exceptions, and detail what constitutes adequate justification. If other reasons surface, they could be added.

Should ARIN develop a document to post? Approximately 18 were in favor, 4 were against. On another show of hands, a majority was for requiring companies to describe/enumerate their reasons for exceptions. John Curran indicated that ARIN doesn’t have the technical expertise to make a list of technical reasons that are not acceptable. Alec will bring these comments to the AC on the following day for consideration. The ppml@arin.net mailing list will host any further discussion on this topic.

Routing Information Service

RIPE’s Routing Information Service (RIS) provides BGP routing information similar to a “looking glass” service, but also allows users to select past information. The RIS collects routing information at various locations on the Internet and will provide the ability to integrate this information into a comprehensive view.

Mirjam Kuehne described the RIS as a vehicle that allows one to look back to determine why a site could not be accessed. RIPE NCC’s remote route collectors include: RIPE NCC, LINX-London, AMS-IX-Amsterdam, and SFINX-Paris. Mirjam explained how to use the ASinuse tool – a user interface for the RIS. It enables a user to look for RRC, AS Numbers, IP addresses, and timeframe.

Open Microphone

Richard Jimmerson conducted the open microphone session.

• “Has there been anything done about mirroring other RIRs?” Richard stated that ARIN mirrors RIPE and other routing registries while Mirjam indicated that RIPE mirrors ARIN’s routing registry. Richard will get more information about mirroring other RIRs and report at the open microphone session tomorrow.
• A request was made for ARIN to show meeting participation by types of attendees, e.g. technical.
• A suggestion to make microallocations of /27 instead of /24 was voiced. This topic was deferred for discussion the next day.
• “How do you match IPs with AS Numbers in another RIR region?” A request was made that this question be sent to a mailing list for discussion. It was noted that the IETF has a working group (provisioning and registration) that may be applicable.

The meeting was adjourned.

Minutes of Public Policy Meeting Day 2 - April 3

Ray Plzak called the meeting to order and thanked the sponsors, Global Crossing, NetVmg, and Juniper, for the previous evening’s social event. The day’s agenda was reviewed and the meeting proceeded.

Community Learning and Education Working Group (CLEW)

Bill Darte, CLEW Chair, noted that there are 1,368 members of ARIN and only 130 subscribers on the CLEW mailing list. Bill urged for greater participation.

He directed attention to a CLEW-developed list of potential documents to be developed and asked attendees to number them in order of priority. Richard Jimmerson walked through ARIN’s site map to demonstrate that the majority of the documents requested already exist in some form on ARIN’s website. Richard explained that ARIN is working on developing a new website to improve the navigation.

A review of the suggested list of documents resulted in various suggestions from the group:

• In response to a request for a document on good Internet citizenship, Scott Bradner stated that there is an existing RFC on the subject.
• Scott also advocated the use of the term “suggestion” in place of “guidelines” when providing instructions for conducting searches in ARIN’s database.
• In response to a request for a document describing Internet hierarchy, Scott Marcus suggested that it might not be in ARIN’s best interest.
• Bill suggested placing related terminology in a glossary, as well as a description of the term “utilization.” Ray Plzak reported that an IETF working group is developing a glossary of terms. A majority was in favor of publishing a glossary of terms that apply to RIR activities.

In response to a question regarding a rewrite of RFC 2050, Richard commented that the RIRs are currently reviewing documents and are making 2050 a priority. Mirjam added that the RIRs have discussed working together on other common documents. One comment suggested that revisions to 2050 accommodate the two emerging RIRs. When asked how many think that the ASO should be challenged to put a revision of 2050 on the table, 20 hands were raised. Eight hands signified an interest in asking for feedback on the CLEW list.

A draft document designed to help ISPs explain ARIN’s process to their downstream customers has been developed. A majority signified that there is a need for this document. Most felt that the draft document was on target, with only slight revisions needed. Revisions will be forthcoming.

A list of suggestions for a members-only website was presented. Discussions yielded no additional comments. Suggestions for future training and education initiatives were solicited yielding the following discussions.

• Tutorials at ARIN meetings. A majority was in favor of having tutorials at each ARIN meeting. Sentiment was also expressed for providing tutorials at meetings such as NANOG. Richard said that ARIN will request time on the next NANOG agenda to present a tutorial.
• Processes/issues on CD-ROM or website. Little interest was shown here.
• Technical experts to present at meetings. At a show of hands, most thought this to be a good idea. One attendee suggested that technical issues should be separate from policy discussions. A majority supported the inclusion of legal, educational, and other professionals as technical experts. Bill commented that CLEW is responsible for promoting technical issues and inviting experts to give presentations.
• Presentations at other forums. Only a few hands signified support for ARIN staff taking its show on the road. It was commented that RIPE training is very effective for its LIRs. A suggestion was voiced to present to the ISPs how and why allocations are made.

Bill suggested development of a document that describes address policy when an organization is going to reorganize, change ownership, or undertake other transactions affecting registrations. Bill concluded his presentation by requesting all to get involved in CLEW and asking that everyone turn in their prioritized list of documents for tabulation.

IAB/IESG IPv6 Report

Mirjam Kuehne reported that the IAB/IESG is in the process of distinguishing between allocation policy and technical recommendations and requirements. Discussions have been held with the RIRs to promote increased cooperation between the RIR and IETF communities. This may culminate in producing documents jointly.

Randy Bush, IESG Member and director of the Operations & Management Area of the IETF, commented on technical aspects of IPv6 formats by saying that the original architecture was designed to help keep routers from breaking. He said that IPv6 must be aggregatable, and that multihoming and route filtering are important topics to be discussed at other meetings. ARIN participants were asked to increase their involvement at these meetings.

A discussion ensued regarding the proposal that establishes /48 as the standard allocation. Comments included:

• ARIN should not delay its decision, leaving it up to the other RIRs.
• It is difficult to develop ARIN policy with the technical issues not yet resolved.
• Policy should be developed jointly and not just as an ARIN policy.
• IANA doesn’t need to be involved.

IPv6 Policy Working Group

Thomas Narten, Co-chair of ARIN’s IPv6 WG, briefed the group on WG activities. An IPv6 Internet draft developed by IESG/IAB, http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iesg-ipv6-addressing-recommendations-00.txt , will be reissued. The WG would like to formalize the policy. The ARIN AC has recommended that ARIN adopt the /48 policy, but a decision has not yet been made. Randy indicated that the document makes it clear that the boundaries cannot be hacked into and that the policy can change in the future. Also, routing is still an important issue.

When asked whether anyone is vehemently opposed to adopting the /48 policy, no hands were raised. Another show of hands revealed a relative majority was in favor of moving ahead and adopting the policy. No one voiced opposition. This policy recommendation will be forwarded to the list and a last call will be issued.

Routing Table and Measurement Analysis (RTMA) Panel

Cathy Wittbrodt, ARIN AC and RTMA working group Chair, introduced the panel of presenters and described reasons for the growth of the routing table. As policies are changed, we must look at how they affect the real world. She outlined discussion questions and supplied the mailing list address (rtma@arin.net) for ongoing discussions.

Phil Smith, from Cisco, continued the discussion by saying that he has been following the routing table for 2.5 years. He tracks the table by RIR region, and is now tracking by five regions in anticipation of the startup of AFRINIC and LACNIC.

To supplement his presentation materials, he touched on several points:

• There are 21,000 to 22,000 allocated AS Numbers that are not announced.
• The average AS path length is 5.3 and is not growing.
• The APNIC region has been experiencing the fastest rate of growth in AS Numbers.
• Some private AS Numbers are being announced, as well as some reserved by IANA.

Next, Scott Marcus presented a series of charts showing trends in IPv4 registration. He suggested using independent reviewers to analyze data. Scott also pointed out that AS Number growth rate each year is consistently 50 to 52%. One study suggests that AS Numbers will run out in 2005. A suggestion was made to compare RIR allocations vs total announcements.

Bill Woodcock reflected on the crisis of March/April 1999 when a spike in the routing table indicated a sharp increase in new ASes and prefixes appearing in the table. In general, as resources are allocated, more AS Numbers and prefixes appear in the table. Holes caused by the announcement of more specific routes now account for greater than 50% of entries in the routing table.

Scott Marcus noted that while multihoming is increasing at an accelerated rate, AS Numbers are increasing at a steady rate, suggesting that a factor other than multihoming must be influencing depletion of AS Numbers. ARIN’s AC will watch the rate of AS Number growth acceleration. The IETF community is considering changing AS Numbers from 16- to 32-bit strings.

Abha Abuja, IESG Member and director of the Routing Area of the IETF, continued the discussion by stating that prefixes are only part of the problem. The number of paths (or routes) is also a contributing factor, and their rate of growth is different from the prefixes. She noted that /24s have the largest increase in the routing table.

Cathy Wittbrodt encouraged posting ideas and concepts on the mailing list.

Alec Peterson added that the ARIN AC would be discussing microallocations at their meeting later that day. A suggestion was made to expand the list of critical exchange points that should receive microallocations. Cathy pointed out that parameters for microallocations need to be defined, must not be subjective, and should be based on clear direction and operational reality.

Open Microphone

Richard Jimmerson encouraged anyone with a policy issue not yet discussed to come forward and present it.

• In response to a question about ARIN fees, John Curran mentioned that this topic was on the agenda for the following day.
• A question was asked: Suppose an organization has several data centers, each with diverse routing and needing additional address space separate from the original allocation. For routing reasons, they must keep their original /20. How can each center get the space it needs?

ARIN maintains that some organizations have been able to justify allocations at various data centers under one maintainer ID when they can demonstrate 80% of previous allocations have been utilized. It was noted that some organizations have difficulty doing this when some data centers grow at a rate slower than others. Many organizations that cannot demonstrate 80% efficient utilization of previous allocations, justify separate maintainer IDs for each data center. Should ARIN have a policy allowing organizations to deaggregate without having to show 80% utilization under one maintainer ID?

Discussion

• Geographic distribution could be a consideration. However, it should be closely watched so that a /20 is not fully utilized at one center while another center receives a new /20.
• ARIN discourages subscribing organizations from requesting additional addresses from an upstream provider, but has no policy against it. Providers not knowing when a downstream has gone to another ISP or ARIN for additional space may pose a problem.
• Require subscribers to make their address blocks publicly known. (ARIN cannot give out any information other than what is publicly available in its database.)
• Ensure that multiple divisions requesting space don’t abuse the process.
• Require companies to sign a release form.
• Small to medium startup organizations should be given greater consideration for separate blocks of addresses for their data centers to support their growing businesses.

It was requested that a summary of today’s discussion be posted on the mailing list for further discussion.

• Responding to a question from the previous day, Richard said that ARIN mirrors other RIRs as a flat mirror, not a true mirror.

Sponsor