ARIN 53 Day 1 Recap

By Christina Paladeau – Social Media and Content Specialist

Greetings from the island oasis of Barbados, where the ARIN 53 Public Policy and Members Meeting has officially begun! We’re excited to welcome both new and familiar faces joining us in Bridgetown and online for a great lineup of policy discussions, organizational updates, guest speakers, and more. Read on for a summary of what has happened so far at ARIN 53.

Want to join in the discussions remotely? Register before tomorrow so we can invite you to the Zoom webinar.

Surf’s Up

In typical Caribbean fashion, Monday morning greeted us with warm, breezy weather as we began the first official day of the meeting. Director of Communications Hollis Kara got us started with opening announcements, introductions of our Board of Trustees, Advisory Council (AC), and the Number Resource Organization Number Council (NRO NC), and an overview of the meeting agenda. She also offered thanks to our ARIN 53 network sponsor, C&W Business, webcast sponsor, Google, and bronze sponsor, IPv4.Global by Hilco Streambank, along with tips for both virtual and in-person attendees to make the most of their meeting experience.

Before sailing into the morning’s presentations and updates, we heard opening remarks from John Curran, ARIN President and CEO, and Bill Sandiford, Board of Trustees Chair, who both emphasized the importance of community members’ participation in our meetings and in ARIN policy development and thanked the ARIN staff who make these meetings possible. Then we received a warm welcome and notes on the importance of Internet number resources, their management, and community participation in policy and governance from Desron Bynoe, Country Manager, Flow Barbados, on behalf of ARIN 53 Network Sponsor C&W Business.

Nancy Carter, Board Treasurer, was up first with her ever-popular Financial Report. She provided a detailed review of the main business of the Finance Committee along with updates on 2023 revenues, operating expenses, financial positions, and investments, which experienced favorable performance.

A question was raised about the status of a planned contribution to the Internet Engineering Task Force Endowment that did not appear in the 2023 budget. John Curran explained that this was because distribution of this second installment of the contribution had been contingent upon other organizations joining ARIN to provide support to the endowment, which was not yet the case. He encouraged anyone involved in stakeholder organizations to connect with him about making a contribution, then answered another question about projections for the impacts of the change in the fee schedule for legacy resources. John explained that revenues are approximately even with growing operating expenses, which include efforts to make services more robust and programs more inclusive.

Bill Sandiford, Board Chair, then presented his Board of Trustees Report in which he discussed ARIN’s financial and fiduciary actions, including approval of the aforementioned distribution to the IETF Endowment and an updated ARIN Participants Expected Standards of Behavior.

Next it was time for the Advisory Council (AC) Update and On-Docket Report, with AC Chair Kat Hunter introducing how the AC operates, your current AC members (with a special welcome to newest members Matthew Gamble, Elizabeth Goodson, Kaitlyn Pellak, and Daniel Schatte), seats up for election this year, outreach participation in 2024, and Working Groups. Then she summarized the policy activity since our last meeting, proposals received, items that are on the docket at ARIN 53, and statistics on proposal adoption and abandonment, and she strongly encouraged both in-person and virtual attendees to share their thoughts on these at ARIN 53. Kat also highlighted other volunteering roles available to and taken on by AC members: ARIN on the Road, Nomination Committee, Policy Experience Working Group, Grant Selection Committee, Mailing List Acceptable Use Policy Committee, and Fellowship Mentors.

A Caribbean Keynote

We switched gears from organizational updates to the keynote address of ARIN 53, which focused on the Caribbean region playing host to this meeting. We heard from MCNET-SOLUTIONS CTO Brent Mc Intosh, who is from Grenada and was recently inducted into the IPv6 Forum Hall of Fame for IPv6 evangelism and continues to support IPv6 deployments through Internet exchange points (IXPs), specific training, and customer network solutions.

Brent began by extending a special welcome to the ARIN 53 Fellows, noting that he was a Fellow at ARIN 39 in New Orleans. He then discussed boosting the Caribbean’s economic potential through the critical digital infrastructure of IXPs and IPv6, providing an overview of their impacts, current deployment statistics, next steps and strategy, benefits and use cases for enterprise, Internet service provider, and government entities, and more. Stay tuned to the blog for an in-depth recap of this impactful presentation in the coming weeks!

Wading Into Policy and Governance

John Sweeting, ARIN’s Chief Customer Officer (CCO), gave a Policy Implementation and Experience Report that focused on allocation versus assignment terminology, fee harmonization, local Internet registry (LIR) versus Internet service provider (ISP) terminology, and policies for IPv4 micro-allocation and for IPv6 allocation size.

He posed the following questions to the community:

• Given the community feedback that “ISP is a very ambiguous term which carries a lot of different connotations to different people, most of which don’t describe the full range of ARIN member LIRs,” should ARIN prefer the term LIR over ISP?
• Given that current staff understanding of policy 4.4 Micro-allocation is that Internet exchange (IX) space must be used for IX switch fabric and not routed, should this requirement be specified in the policy? Or should IXPs be able to use space for other purposes which necessitate routing?
• If an ISP demonstrates they need slightly more than a /20, should ARIN approve a /16? Or a /20 from a /16 reserve? Or a /20 and a /32 (reserved to a /28)? Should the ISP be required to show more utilization?
• Should larger allocations be exempt from the nibble boundary requirement? If so, then where is the correct size to impose that?

These questions inspired commentary from both in-person and virtual participants, with multiple community members taking the opportunity to raise additional considerations and ask follow-up questions to which John Sweeting responded.

Join the discussion at the meeting or on our Public Policy mailing list (PPML) to let us know what you think.

Before we headed into lunch, Policy Analyst Eddie Diego provided a glimpse of recent policy proposals from each of the other Regional Internet Registries (RIRs): AFRINIC, APNIC, LACNIC, and RIPE NCC. The review prompted a question about the impetus for RIPE NCC’s lock on transfers in 2023, which RIPE NCC Managing Director Hans Petter Holen stepped to the mic to answer.

Vice President of Government Affairs Einar Bohlin followed up with an update from the Government Affairs Department (GAD). He covered the GAD team’s areas of focus, interesting developments in international Internet governance from 2023 (including the U.S.’s Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act [CIRCIA] and activities at the United Nations’ annual Internet Governance Forum), and what the team is monitoring in 2024 (including the Internet Telecommunications Union’s Radiocommunication Sector and management of orbits for the rapidly increasing number of satellites).

Lunch and Table Topics

During our break for a reenergizing lunch before the first of this meeting’s two policy blocks, in-person attendees had the option to gather and discuss topics of interest with ARIN AC members. The table topics included:

• NRPM Section 4 Simplification with Gus Reese and Kendrick Knowles
• NRPM Section 6 Evolution with Chris Woodfield and Brian Jones
• Registrations and Privacy with Leif Sawyer and Daniel Schatte

Policy Block

This meeting’s policy discussions were scheduled in two blocks, on Day One and Day Two of ARIN 53. Today, AC members presented each of the following draft and recommended draft policies and then Bill Sandiford opened the floor for community members to provide input, ask questions, and provide a show of support (in the case of recommended draft policies).

• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2023-1: Retire 4.2.1.4. Slow Start – presented by Kaitlyn Pellak
• Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2023-4: Modernization of Registration Requirements – presented by Daniel Schatte
• Draft Policy ARIN-2022-12: Direct Assignment Language Update – presented by Doug Camin
• Draft Policy ARIN-2024-1: Definition of Organization ID/Org ID – presented by Gus Reese

Into the Sunset

Before pausing for a quick stretch and snack break following the day’s policy discussions, we got another update from John Sweeting, who addressed ARIN Membership and Elections, including the effects of fee harmonization, the difference between Service and General Members, the 2024 ARIN Elections timeline, steps to candidacy, the importance of participating in ARIN governance, and more. To learn more about these topics read the blog post “ARIN Membership Explained: What It Means and Why It Matters.”

Following the break, John Curran shared the Number Resource Organization (NRO) Update, and we watched a recorded presentation by Kevin Blumberg with the latest news from the ICANN Address Supporting Organization Address Council (ASO AC). To close out Day One, John Sweeting provided a review of the NRO’s most recent Internet Number Resource Status Report.

Then we took time for community members to ask questions or make comments during an open microphone session hosted by John Curran and Bill Sandiford. Topics included what happens to a Recommended Draft Policy after a poll is taken on it at a meeting and what ARIN’s interaction with ISOC and IANA consists of. Wrapping up the day, Hollis Kara closed with final announcements and adjournment.

See You Tomorrow

With that, we concluded Day One of ARIN 53. Now we’re off to the ARIN Social tonight where we will network with our fellow meeting attendees.

If you would like to refer to anything you have seen so far, all slides from today have been posted online on our ARIN 53 Meeting Materials page, and, over the next few days, we’ll also add links to the full transcript and webcasts to this page as well.

Please be sure to use the #ARIN53 hashtag on social media when sharing about your meeting experience, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for Day Two of ARIN 53!

Taking photos or screenshots of your ARIN 53 experience? We’d love to share them with the community! Tag, reply, comment, or message us on social media or email us at [email protected] with images (and photo credit, if needed) that you grant us permission to publish online.

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