ARIN XVI, Presentation and Discussion Synopsis, Members Meeting [Archived]

ARIN Members Meeting Called to Order

Speaker: Ray Plzak, ARIN President and CEO

Ray Plzak opened the meeting shortly after 9:00 AM PDT with announcements, thanks to the sponsor, and a review of the agenda for the day.

Member Suggestion Process

Speaker: Scott Bradner, ARIN Board of Trustees Secretary

Presentation (Read-only): PDF

Scott outlined a process for members to make suggestions to ARIN and then be reviewed by the community. Suggestions could be made from General Members in good standing by filling out a web form. It would then go through staff and legal review, Advisory Council review, member review, and finally Board review. Details still need to be finalized, but audience members commented that this was a good first step.

ARIN Board and Advisory Council Election Procedures

Speaker: Erika Goedrich, ARIN Membership Coordinator

Presentation (Read-only): PDF

Erika described the voting procedures for the Board of Trustees and Advisory Council elections. Voting opened Friday, October 28, at 12:00 PM ET and will close 7 days later at 12:00 PM ET on November 4. Election results will be announced no later than November 11, 2005, to the arin-announce mailing list and the ARIN website.

The elections are being held to fill two (2) open seats on the Board of Trustees and five (5) open seats on the Advisory Council.

Biographies of each candidate as well as statements of support are available on ARIN’s website.

Voters must be the designated member representative for an ARIN General Member in good standing.

Erika also explained the new voting software that was deployed for the 2005 elections. DMRs must first register to vote using their e-mail address on file with the Member Services Department. MSD then sends an e-mail with a link to the voting booth. DMRs enter a password and choose an election. After selecting the Org ID(s) and candidate(s), DMRs must submit and confirm the vote. Once a vote is confirmed, ARIN staff verifies the organization’s membership status before counting the vote.

Election - Advisory Council Candidates
Presentation (Read-only): PDF

All candidates in attendance were invited to state their qualifications in a short speech to the audience. Candidates who were present and spoke were:

• Dan Alexander
• Bill Darte
• James Deleskie
• Andrew Dul
• Alec Peterson
• Matt Pounsett
• Allie Settlemyre
• John Sweeting
• Suzanne Woolf

The following candidates were not present to speak. Their statements of motivation to serve on the AC and abbreviated biographies were presented to attendees, as well as the URLs to view their full biographies online.

• Owen DeLong
• Teresa Gurney

Election - Board of Trustees Candidates
Presentation (Read-only): PDF

All candidates in attendance were invited to present their qualifications in a short speech to the audience. Candidates who spoke were:

• Lee Howard
• Bill Woodcock

The following candidates were not present to speak. Their statements of motivation to serve on the Board and abbreviated biographies were presented to attendees, as well as the URL to view their full biographies online.

• Vijay Gill
• Doug Humphrey

ARIN Department Reports

ARIN department directors presented status reports on their department’s accomplishments and goals.

Registration Services
Presenter: Leslie Nobile, ARIN Director of Registration Services
Presentation (Read-only): PDF

Question: We’ve heard several times this week that IPv4 is running out, so how many allocations are you expecting to get from IANA?

Leslie responded that there is no way to know for certain, but she expects ARIN will not have to request another allocation for a year-and-a-half.

Member Services
Presenter: Susan Hamlin, ARIN Director of Member Services
Presentation (Read-only): PDF

Question: A nice organization chart with names and pictures was included in the presentation. On the ARIN website, it is a generic org chart. Is there any way the ARIN website can include the specifics?

Susan responded that it was difficult to get all staff to agree to have their pictures posted on the website. The audience said names and titles were enough. Susan agreed to look into this.

Financial Services
Presenter: Bob Stratton, ARIN Director of Financial Services
Presentation (Read-only): PDF

Engineering
Presenter: Ginny Listman, ARIN Director of Engineering
Presentation (Read-only): PDF

Human Resources & Administration
Presenter: Mary K. Lee, ARIN Director of HR & Administration
Presentation (Read-only): PDF

Legal Activities at ARIN

Speakers: Nate Davis, ARIN Director of Operations

Steve Ryan, ARIN Legal Counsel

Presentation: PDF

Nate Davis and Steve Ryan provided an overview of ARIN’s legal activities.

Highlights:

• Since there is no case law precedence, courts must be educated on Internet crime as they go through the process.
• Requests for information from law enforcement must be made in writing. ARIN must do a balancing act as it wants to be a good citizen and therefore cooperate with law enforcement. However, it also must protect the ISP community and therefore needs the requests to be formalized.
• ARIN is not an Internet cop but does have a duty to be a good Net citizen. Its Registration Services Department is tightening the processes for vetting and validating utilization. ARIN is working with the other RIRs to develop more processes.

The audience questioned whether ARIN should follow the laws of Virginia since the user may be in a different location and therefore have different laws. Steve Ryan responded that since ARIN is located in Virginia, those are the laws that apply to ARIN. However, we are trying to maintain jurisdictional relationships with other countries. ARIN has three choices when dealing with potentially illegal activities: ignore it, write to the potential abuser and try to stop it, or turn the information over to law enforcement. ARIN reserves the right to choose, based on the situation.

• ARIN will revoke address space from organizations that have falsified applications or are violating the RSA.
• Steve Ryan then provided an update on U.S. Congressional activity:
  • Telecom Act of 1996 - Congress understands that it needs to be rewritten
  • Database protection - legislation will probably be coming
  • Spyware - political hot button
  • Identity theft - all states have passed or will be passing identity theft statutes
  • Disaster recovery - communications between first responders is still poor

ARIN Advisory Council Report

Speaker: Ron da Silva, AC Chair

Presentation: PDF

Ron da Silva presented a report on the activities of the ARIN Advisory Council. Two AC members recently participated in the Nomination Committee and the AC helped define utilization. AC members continue to represent ARIN at meetings of other RIRs and are participating in the PPML digests. He also reported on Council actions taken with regard to the policy proposal discussions at the ARIN XVI Public Policy Meeting.

Policies to move forward:

• 2005-4: AFRINIC Recognition Policy
• 2005-5: IPv6 HD ratio
• 2005-7: Rationalize Multi-Homing Definition and Requirement (also applied 4.2.2.2 verbiage to 4.3.2.2 for consistency)

Policies to Amend:

• 2005-1: Provider-independent IPv6 Assignments for End Sites
  AC will work with the author, revise, and bring back to the community for further debate, discussion, and review.
• 2005-8: Proposal to amend ARIN IPv6 assignment and utilisation requirement
  AC will work with the author, revise, and bring back to the community for further debate, discussion, and review.

Policies Abandoned:

• 2005-2: Directory Services Overhaul
• 2005-6: IPv4 Micro-allocations for Anycast Services

Comment: Stacy Taylor commented that the AC was also involved in outreach efforts.

ARIN Board of Trustees Report

Speaker: John Curran, Chairman of the Board

John Curran presented a report on the activities of the ARIN Board of Trustees.

Highlights:

• The Board approved updates to processes and procedures, including the Bylaws, conflict of interest policy, voting procedures and editorial changes to the Number Resource Policy Manual. The Board also adopted the Standing Rules for Board Meetings, the Board Handbook and provided Ethics training for incoming Board members.
• Board members continued to participate in NRO and ICANN. Additionally, the Board has become involved in the WSIS and ITU discussions, as the outcome could have a dramatic effect on ARIN and the other RIRs.
• The Board adopted four policies:
  • 2005-3: Lame Delegations
  • 2004-8: Allocation of IPv6 Address Space by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Policy to Regional Internet Registries
  • 2004-5: Address Space for Multiple Discrete Networks
  • 2004-3: Global Addresses for Private Network Inter-Connectivity
• The Board extended the contract for Ray Plzak to continue serving as the President and CEO of ARIN.

ARIN Financial Report

Speaker: Bob Stratton, ARIN Director of Financial Services

Presentation: PDF

Bob Stratton presented a report on ARIN’s finances. Highlights included:

• Projected 2005 Statement of Activities were presented.
  • Expecting to realize a net gain of approximately $2.4 million in 2005. Much of this was due to the collection of overdue accounts which were owed outside of 2005. ARIN does not expect revenue by this means to continue.
• ARIN completed a Sarbanes-Oxley audit. As a result, ARIN now processes checks outside the Financial Services Department, implemented new inventory and purchasing systems, and updated its accounting software. ARIN will probably undergo another Sarbanes-Oxley audit in 2006 along with the regular audit.

Open Microphone

Moderator: John Curran, Chairman of the Board

• An attendee suggested having some staff-assisted workshops so that some policy discussions could be held in advance of the meetings. Just getting people in a room might lead to something better on paper and would help keep the ARIN Public Policy meetings on schedule. ARIN staff would assist in finding a location and coordinating an invite list. The workshops could be held three months before an ARIN meeting. John Curran noted that policy must be submitted 60 days before an ARIN Public Policy meeting, so the turnaround after the workshop would need to be quick. He also pointed out that discussion should be held on the Public Policy Mailing List (ppml).
  • The attendee responded that the three-month timeframe was adequate, as this may just be to set up ideas, not necessarily set policies. He added that sometimes you just need to have an engineering discussion, so even though you want to be open and transparent, sometimes this may be easier and you’ll be able to get things through faster. John Curran stated that travel is sometimes difficult, but another suggestion would be to set aside more time at regular ARIN meetings for the proposal to then be submitted at the next meeting.
  • An audience member asked if ARIN staff could provide logistical support in setting up a phone conference bridge and file repository for diagrams that don’t work in a mailing list.
  • Another attendee suggested a NetMeeting may be more effective. John Curran mentioned that ARIN tried this for the fall meeting, but it was difficult to coordinate response from the community. However, it may work for a small working group session.
• A question was asked if the discrepancy between revenue and expense would continue rolling forward. John Curran referred back to the Treasurer’s Report that the reserves are expected to increase by approximately $2.4 million this year. Though this seems like a large number, he stressed that the overdue account collections was a large part of this and that it was a one-time bump. Still, the reserves are approaching approximately $16.4 million, which is twice the annual budget and the Board realizes they need to discuss this and how to bring the fee structure and reserve in line. On the other side of the equation, what happens between now and 20 years when everyone is using IPv6 and no one is requesting IPv4, where ARIN might not have a whole lot of revenue, but still need to get together to discuss policy.
• A follow-up question asked what the Board considers as enough reserve. John Curran responded that it doesn’t see a need for more than two years and questions if there is a reason for more than one year. Both John Curran and Bill Woodcock mentioned that reducing fees has been discussed but it was met by mixed results from the membership.
• An attendee asked if the reserve could be used to invest in research and development and better hardware. John Curran responded that other organizations handled that aspect.
• Another attendee asked about the legal defense fund and if one case could exhaust the reserve. John Curran explained that the budget included two line items, one for legal representation and one for anticipated above-and-beyond legal activities. However, it does not include what a finding or litigation against us may cost. Steve Ryan added that the reserve could be used by just one case.

Closing Announcements and Meeting Adjournment

Speaker: Ray Plzak, ARIN President and CEO

Ray Plzak made closing announcements and again thanked Equinix for its sponsorship. He recognized John Curran for his superb job moderating the meeting and thanked ARIN staff. He also thanked all of the meeting attendees. He concluded by inviting all attendees to come to ARIN XVII in Montreal, April 9-12, 2006. The meeting was adjourned shortly before 12:00 PM PDT.

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