Meet the 2026 ARIN Community Grant Recipients

By Amanda Gauldin – Senior Project Manager

Now in its eighth year, the ARIN Community Grant Program funds projects that strengthen the Internet and contribute positively to the Internet community in the ARIN region. We are pleased to announce our 2026 grant recipients and share their summaries of the projects they will be working on.

RPKI Operational Health Dashboard for the ARIN Service Region

Virginia Tech | Blacksburg, Virginia, USA | Grant amount: US$17,350

We have built a 14-year longitudinal warehouse of RPKI repository objects covering all five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) — approximately 3.9 billion object observations from inception (~2012) to the present, content-addressed in 139 GB of Apache Parquet. Our analysis (currently under review at IMC 2026) shows that under the same RFCs the five RIRs operate sharply differently: CRL validity windows span 7x, revocation compliance ranges from 9 percent (AFRINIC) to more than 99 percent (ARIN, since 2023), and re-signing cadence spans 16x. ARIN’s own 2023 operational shifts — re-signing cadence from 14 to 80 days, CA certificate lifetime cut from 10 years to 825 days, revocation compliance jumping from under 5 to more than 99 percent — are directly visible in the data. The community currently has no shared place to monitor these metrics continuously. This grant operationalizes the warehouse into a weekly-refreshed public dashboard at rpki-health.netsecurelab.org.

Dominica State College’s Youth Internet Governance Lab: Campus Evidence for Inclusive, Resilient Internet

Dominica State College | Stockfarm, Dominica | Grant amount: US$20,000

Dominica State College (DSC) proposes to establish the DSC Youth Internet Governance Lab, a campus-based, student-led initiative implemented through the DSC Innovation Hub. The project will use DSC’s real connectivity challenges — Wi-Fi interference, campus dead zones, and frequent wireless signal drops across upper and lower campus — as an evidence base for youth-led Internet governance, technical research, IPv6 and routing security education, inclusive access analysis, and policy development.

Associate degree-level students in Computer Science, IT, Telecommunications, Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Education, and Law/Paralegal Studies will work in interdisciplinary teams. They will conduct supervised campus connectivity mapping, produce technical dashboards, develop an IPv6 readiness checklist, create introductory learning materials on routing security and RPKI, assess accessibility implications for students with diverse learning needs, and prepare student-authored Internet governance policy briefs.

The project will conclude with a DSC Youth Internet Governance Forum in 2027, where students will present technical findings, accessibility insights, legal/governance analyses, and recommendations for small-island campus connectivity resilience. The project will produce an open Small Island Campus Connectivity and Youth Internet Governance Toolkit for adaptation by other colleges in the ARIN Caribbean region.

Applicant Appreciation

We thank all applicants for their thoughtful proposals and look forward to continuing to support projects that strengthen the Internet and serve the ARIN community.

Future Grants

Interested in applying for a grant next year? The 2027 call for applications will be open in the spring, with details on how to apply posted to our ARIN Community Grant Program page and shared via the ARIN Announce mailing list.

We look forward to continuing to make a positive and lasting impact on the Internet together.

Post written by:

Amanda Gauldin
Senior Project Manager

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