arin and ops fora (was Re: AltDB?)

Sun Jan 9 23:27:43 UTC 2011

On Jan 8, 2011, at 4:11 AM, David Conrad wrote:

> Another view is that ARIN's whole and sole reason for being is to provide services to the network operators in the ARIN region. As such, it would be ill-advised for ARIN to change those services without consulting the community that ARIN serves and getting their buy-in. Hopefully, there's a middle ground.

Agreed.  Presently, we rely upon the ARIN consultation and suggestion process 
for getting tactical input on operational changes.  We also recognize guidance 
from the IETF both via IAB communications and in the form of the BCP RFC series.  
Obviously, if there were a convenient way for the operator community to provide 
consensus guidance on Internet number resource operational matters, such input 
would be highly valued.

> On Jan 7, 2011, at 10:24 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
>> i hear in what you're saying
>> a desire to have a way to impact ARIN's behaviour outside of NRPM edits
>> and perhaps ARIN does need to address this with some new online forum for
>> things which aren't allocation policy but which should still be decided
>> using community input.
> 
> Yep.  Not sure it should be an ARIN-operated thing (nor am I sure that it shouldn't be), but something a bit more focused on the operation of services ARIN provides than ppml might be helpful.

Excellent question.  To the extent that it is best practices on these types of
services, then that's relatively easy for ARIN to interface with... if it is 
specific direction to ARIN to "do xyz", then ultimately the decision rests with
the ARIN Board regarding that input, since that involves how we spend the service
fees of the members.

On Jan 8, 2011, at 4:15 PM, David Conrad wrote:
> While I think BCOPs (and BCOP BoFs) are a great idea, I guess the question is how can folks be assured that ARIN would follow a NANOG community-defined  BCOP relating directly to ARIN operations. For example, if the NANOG community were to (reasonably) say "BCOP is to use IETF-defined standards for publishing and accessing resource registration data", I'd imagine ARIN might (reasonably) disagree and continue down the RWS path.

If the process for forming such recommendations were fair & open to the same 
community, the resulting documents would be quite compelling.  While that does not 
assure ARIN would follow them, this community has never been shy about providing
feedback when the right things aren't happening... (and I'd note that a community
which capable of reaching consensus on such documents is equally capable of seating 
a Board amenable to such documents, if there ever were to be a problem in this area)

>  My impression is that the various WGs and SIGs in the other RIRs perform something similar to that function.  There doesn't appear to be anything similar in the ARIN region.

The role is served by the ARIN Board, which is member-elected and composed of 
volunteers (and myself as CEO).  If folks think that a more formal structure
for operational input (either within ARIN or via liaison to another body) is 
called for, I'd suggest continued discussion on the various mailing lists.

Interesting discussion... thanks for raising it.
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN