2023 ARIN Community Grant Program Recipients

2023 ARIN Community Grant Program Recipients

2023 Applications

Applications	13
Organization Type	2 associations, 6 corporations, 7 nonprofits, 1 LLC, 1 intergovernmental, 1 NGO
Organization Region	9 United States, 2 Caribbean, 2 outside ARIN region
Category (some projects identified multiple categories)	9 Internet technical improvements, 2 registry processes and technology improvements, 8 informational outreach, 6 research
Total funding requested (USD)	$199,505
Average funding requested (USD)	$15,350
Projects selected to receive a grant	3
Total funding provided (USD)	$47,000

Project summaries provided by grant recipients.

Open Source RegCtl & PrefixCtl

FullCtl
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
$20,000

Registration data is not standardized; each Regional Internet Registry (RIR) has their own data schema. Additionally, changes made at RIRs have downstream effects, with no “buffer” to absorb these changes. Route Origin Authorization (ROA) data can also be affected. Further, queries of registration data fail without context, and this happens often because of the “no less, no more” philosophy to answering queries. To solve all of this (and more) we propose to complete development of “RegCtl,” a software tool to normalize registration data to a global standard, and to combine that with a completed “PrefixCtl” tool, which will add additional context from Whois, the Internet Routing Registry (IRR), and routing data. The two tools will both be fully open sourced once complete, and together will provide standardized, reliable, and contextualized Registry Data Access Protocol (RDAP) and ROA information management, globally.

Project objectives are to:

• Complete development of RegCtl.
• Complete development of PrefixCtl.

IPv6 Test Pod

Internet2
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Grant amount: $7,000

As world adoption of IPv6 continues, many applications are being tested and operated in dual-stack networks; however, dual stack is not a stopping point for IPv6 adoption. Work needs to begin testing applications and services in environments where IPv4 is being retired — these include networks that use DNS64/NAT64 to provide client access to IPv4 networks, but also networks that only have IPv6 access. Setting up these test networks can prove a challenging barrier for many, especially those without a networking background.

The IPv6 Test Pod project will select, adapt, configure, and distribute small inexpensive Wi-Fi routers to people who wish to test applications in a dual-stack, NAT64/DNS64, and IPv6-only network. The devices will require minimal setup, provide three Wi-Fi SSIDs to test in each environment, and require only a basic Internet connection to work, even if IPv6 is not natively available on. The devices will work in a variety of environments, including behind IPv4-only NAT networks. The project will also provide a tunnel termination service to provide IPv6 network access.

Project objectives are to:

• Lower the barrier to entry for testing applications on IPv6-only networks and networks using IPv6-only transition technology such as DNS64/NAT64.
• Provide a small, inexpensive Wi-Fi router and tunnel termination service to people for testing applications and services in IPv6-only or networks transitioning to IPv6-only.
• Gather and report feedback from participants on issues encountered and what further tooling may help in troubleshooting.

NTP TCP Services Daemon

Network Time Foundation, Inc.
Talent, Oregon, USA
Grant amount: $20,000

The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a UDP-based system to distribute and synchronize time on network devices. While the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is the best-known choice for time synchronization on general networks, it is not a great choice for access, authentication, key exchange, management, monitoring, or several other functions. TCP-based communications are a better choice for these.

The NTP Project team has been contemplating how to best use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to implement the aforementioned functions for many years’ time, and its development and deployment have been waiting for the resources to “make it happen.”

Receiving this grant will allow the Network Time Foundation (NTF) to implement and deploy the NTP TCP Services Daemon to interact with the NTP Project’s NTP Daemon (ntpd), as part of its open-source NTP distribution.

Users of the NTP Project’s NTP distribution (the vast majority of ARIN users, we expect) will be able to use the NTP TCP Service Daemon to interact with ntpd for key exchange (likely including NTS), management, and monitoring.

Project objectives are to:

• Design, implement, and test a framework for a TCP services daemon to interact with the NTP Project’s ntpd.
• Implement a basic management client to demonstrate that it works.