Meeting of the ARIN Advisory Council - 10 October 2014 [Archived]

Baltimore, Maryland

Advisory Council Attendees:

• John Sweeting, Chair (JSw)
• Dan Alexander, Vice Chair (DA)
• Cathy Aronson (CA)
• Kevin Blumberg (KB)
• Bill Darte (BD)
• Owen DeLong (OD)
• Andrew Dul (AD)
• David Farmer (DF)
• Scott Leibrand (SL)
• Tina Morris (TM)
• Milton Mueller (MM)
• Heather Schiller (HS)
• Rob Seastrom (RS)
• John Springer (JSp)

Minute Taker:

• Thérèse Colosi

ARIN Staff:

• Michael Abejuela (MA), Assoc. General Counsel
• Einar Bohlin (EB), Sr. Policy Analyst
• John Curran, President & CEO
• Nate Davis, COO
• Leslie Nobile, (LN) Dir., Registration Services

ARIN General Counsel

• Stephen Ryan, Esq.

ARIN Board

• Paul Andersen, Treasurer/Vice-Chair

1. Welcome

The Chair called the meeting to order at 1:22 p.m. EDT. The presence of quorum was noted.

2. Agenda Review

The Chair called for any comments on the Agenda. He stated that Items 6, 8, 11, and 13 (Draft Policies 2014-9, 2014-16, 2014-18, and 2014-20) would be discussed after item 3, in order for their motions to be made, before discussion of the rest of the items.

3. Approval of the Minutes

It was moved by CA, and seconded by JSp, that:

“The Advisory Council approves the Minutes of 18 September 2014, as written.”

The Chair called for any objections.

The motion carried with no objections.

The Chair stated Items 6, 8, and 11 would now be discussed.

6. Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2014-9: Resolve Conflict Between RSA and 8.2 Utilization Requirements

It was moved by HS, and seconded by SL, that:

“The ARIN Advisory Council advances ‘Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2014-9: Resolve Conflict Between RSA and 8.2 Utilization Requirements’ to Last Call.”

The Chair called for discussion. HS stated that, based on community feedback, most were in favor of this policy with OD noted as against it.

The motion carried with 13 in favor (DA, CA, KB, BD, AD, DF, SL, TM, MM, HS, RS, JSp, JSw), and one against (OD) via roll call.

8. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-15: Allow Inter-RIR ASN Transfers

SL stated that he had suggested abandonment of this Draft Policy (DP) at the ARIN Public Policy Consultation (PPC), and the sense of the room supported the suggestion. However, at the ARIN Public Policy Meeting (PPM) the count was 23 to 13 against abandonment. He believed there was a need to keep working on it, as he saw no consensus to abandon it at this time. He noted legitimate use cases in China and Germany in that ASNs may have to be registered with certain RIRs in some circumstances. He noted that some changes to the implementation timeframe statement in the policy text might be made and presented at the next PPC as a ‘Recommended’ DP. He did not believe a motion was needed at this time.

The President asked, in the case of an organization that has an ASN in use for global backbone but has to use one with a national NIC, do they expect to transfer it there? SL replied that they generally have an ASN from ARIN and want to use it in that region – the issue is that they are required to register it there. The President asked that SL include that explanation in the statement of the policy. SL agreed.

JSp queried if this would ‘break’ RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure), whether the RIRs would have to do the necessary work sooner or later. The President stated that it would give the RIRs an unspecified workload, and would require that the RPKI community come up with an architecture for how ASN transfers should work, which they would not otherwise do. JSp stated that he endorsed the idea that ARIN does this work.

OD stated that five RIRs would need to do a substantial amount of work. The President explained that the five RIRs and RPKI community have to agree on the architecture. Three of the five do not have a policy in place, hence limited interest to working on it. They are still trying to get IPv4 RPKI transfers working smoothly, and it has been more than 3 years. There are many issues that must be resolved to accommodate inter-RIR ASN transfers with RPKI, and the specification and development will be a large amount of work to do so.

SL stated that, with regard to changing the implementation timelines, the author was amenable, as it was good for him to get the policy implemented by ARIN, with the understanding that until work is completed ASN transfers would not be supported via RPKI. JSp asked if CNNIC had a deadline, and SL stated it did but it was shorter than ARIN’s expected time to approve this policy.

AD stated that he believed that the cost of doing this work greatly exceeded the benefit.

It was moved by AD, and seconded by OD, that:

“The ARIN Advisory Council abandons ‘Draft Policy ARIN-2014-15: Allow Inter-RIR ASN Transfers’.”

The Chair called for discussion. SL reminded the Council that the community’s sense, at the PPM, was not to abandon with a count of 23 to 13. He noted that comments during the PPC were that it was not worth effort. The Chair stated that the count of 23 to 13 was out of 165 people in the room plus 8 remote participants.

KB queried if the policy was technically sound, a basic criteria of a policy proposal. He had serious reservations that it was, or could be in any timeframe, to make it useful.

DF stated he was against the motion. He agreed that it was not technically sound at this time, and would vote to abandon it, but he believed that unless it remained on the AC’s docket, the case would stay where it is forever. The Chair pointed out that the actual matter may not last forever.

OD supported abandonment. He stated that two out of five RIRs are likely to have a policy to support this and IANA – there is nothing there. BD also supported the motion to abandon.

KB asked if it was only an issue with 2 bytes. The President replied that the work to be done is similar for both 2 and 4-byte, although the implementation of the 2-byte ASN registry at the IANA makes things slightly more challenging.

RS supported the motion to abandon, as he believed the policy would create one more roadblock with regard to the use of RPKI. He was not in favor of imposing further issues and making a bad matter worse.

The motion to abandon carried with 10 (DA, CA, KB, BD, OD, AD, DF, TM, HS, RS) in favor, and 4 against (SL, MM, JSp, JSw) via roll call.

11. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-18: Simplifying Minimum Allocations and Assignments

It was moved by RS, and seconded by KB, that:

“The ARIN Advisory Council abandons ‘Draft Policy ARIN-2014-18: Simplifying Minimum Allocations and Assignment’.”

The Chair called for discussion. RS stated that there were overwhelmingly negatively comments with regard to this proposal. He attempted to work with the author on modifying the text but it did not pan out. JSp believed it was a bad idea to introduce an endorsement into the matter.

The motion to abandon carried unanimously via roll call vote.

13. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-20: Transfer Policy Slow-Start and Simplified Needs Verification

It was moved by KB, and seconded by BD, that:

“The ARIN Advisory Council abandons ‘Draft Policy ARIN-2014-20: Transfer Policy Slow-Start and Simplified Needs Verification’.”

The Chair called for discussion. KB stated that this was a very complicated and long policy that had substantive issues compared to actual ARIN practice. The community has had a hard time parsing the document. He acknowledged that it had great points individually, but no way of getting behind it all. He suggested either splitting out the items in the proposal or abandoning it and starting fresh. He had spoken with the author to suggest it. DF stated the shepherds would be recommending that there are good ideas, but that the proposal needed to be broken up. KB stated that this is being abandoned, but it contained good ideas, and we would love to continue to work on it. The author is in support of that.

The motion to abandon carried with all in favor.

The Chair reminded DA, AD, KB and RS to provide statements explaining abandonment to the staff and the rest of the AC.

The Chair resumed the agenda in order.

4. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-1: Out of Region Use

MM stated that there was a lot of support for this DP, but the issues on double counting restrictions needed to be rewritten, based on comments at both the PPM and the PPC. He noted people quibbled with the threshold – that there was no sense that there was a clear direction to take on the matter.

BD stated that he and DF participated in the Table Topic discussions, and one person quibbled with technical specifications. The person interpreted that because he had more than two ASNs outside the region, it was disqualifying him from coming back for more addresses. The thresholds, if they are included, should be explicit if it is disenfranchising anyone.

MM stated that another problem was that there was so much out of region use occurring that people could complain about going to ARIN and having to show all their ASNs from all around the world and it would become more burdensome. Whatever verification method we come up with needs to be simple.

OD believed that the reality was that many of the organizations are headquartered in region, and outside use is relatively small and they do not want to start up with another RIR - as space may not be available. He believed it needed to move forward and address the complaints.

The President noted concerns from two law enforcement folks, and asked the AC if they knew of the concerns and could summarize. OD stated he understood the concern to be that law enforcement did not like that the Whois database may not lead to an entity within their reach.

LN stated that the original question was “Does it allow for a shell company to use all space out of region?” She noted that this policy did not address that matter. The President stated that the draft policy would add clarity for ARIN in processing requests, but the community needs to determine if the outcome would be desirable.

DF stated that he believed there were more revisions needed on the DP, noting that feedback at the PPC indicated that there are some rational limits that can be imposed; and, that he was working on language he could post to the AC’s list for review. The gist is to demonstrate use of a /22 in-region before you can exceed use of a /20 out of region. AD stated that he had asked staff: if you had an organization where most of its network is in-region, and it has 17 AS’s outlying based on incidental use, would they not be in compliance?

KB stated that he did believe the DP could get toward consensus with out radically stripping out main contentions. This was to protect the IPv4 flawed depletion issue, and now it is about legitimizing the out of region use, with which everyone is happy. He believed it needed to be clarified that some out of region use is acceptable but a significant amount is not. The Chair advised the need for clarity: define what ‘some’ and what ‘significant’ means.

BD queried if we can get the information that we would need, and what we would require in region? The Chair stated that based on privacy acts in certain countries we may not be able to.

The President stated the need for clarity with regard to the draft policy language – are we applying our policies on efficient use of resources in other regions, or that region’s policies? If we are using our policies on resources in other regions, there may be cases where that doesn’t work.

HS stated that the policy was originally proposed in 2013 in December, 10 months ago, when staff raised it as a problem. It has not been moving forward. She noted that it may be overtaken by events, and we may run out before it can be passed. She did not believe that the section on IPv6 addressed a problem that exists today for anyone.

It was moved by HS, and seconded by BD, that:

“The ARIN Advisory Council abandons ‘Draft Policy ARIN-2014-1: Out of Region Use’.”

The Chair called for discussion. MM stated he was against the motion. He believed the reasoning to say we will run out is incorrect and that run out makes the reason for the policy stronger. This proposal was made with IPv6 in mind with regard to transnational networks. People do not want to go to five different RIRs for large blocks for IPv6. He noted that the strongest argument against the policy was that people from other regions would be coming to ARIN to set up shell companies. MM believed this to be a temporary problem. If this policy passes after IPv4 run out, that would be fine; however, it would not solve the shell company issue.

The Chair asked MM if he saw value to abandoning this DP and rewriting one with clear IPv6 out of region use text, so as not to confuse people. MM stated that a complicated issue is the reporting issue and other RIR’s holdings. That needs to be worked out. He stated it would be easier once IPv4 is gone. This text could be modified to state that it only applies after IPv4 run out. MM also stated that he believed that law enforcement believes that the bad guys are coming to get space from ARIN and they can be caught with a more jurisdictional policy.

Counsel stated that he had attended the ARIN Government Working Group/law enforcement meeting recently, and the objection is they want someone who has some contact with the service region in a meaningful way - not a shell company. There is no objection to multi-national aspect. They support servicing multi-nationals getting numbers for use abroad.

OD opposed the motion to abandon. He believed the DP was a result of a number of members expressing a difficulty to perform multi-national operations, and the way staff handled the requests. He believed now it was as if staff was interpreting it primarily as exclusively a problem for multi-nationals in the region. He did not believe that starting over with a new DP would be beneficial.

KB supported the motion to abandon the DP. He stated that each time there has been an area of support and then an area of disagreement. ‘Spinning’ these areas (IPv6 policy/multi-national use outside of the region) into individual policies would not allow enough time for consideration.

RS stated that he was in favor of an extraordinarily liberal IPv6 policy and to leave IPv4 as it is as there has been no problem with how staff has been handling it. He was in support of abandoning the DP.

ND asked OD for a clear problem statement. OD stated that, in his experience, working with a number of organizations with both in and out of region usage: many have had difficulty over the last 18 months getting IPv6 resources. ARIN applies the test consistently across the board. 18 months ago, it used to be that if you had AS’s in the service region and had some overseas, there was no problem obtaining addresses. However, currently: 1) ARIN no longer counts usage of existing resources out of region as valid for obtaining more space; and, 2) One is unable to use ’needs’ outside of the region as justification for getting space at all. This applies to both IPv4 and IPv6.

AD stated that the text has come a long way on this DP but is not near completion. He noted that there were good ideas for a next draft in a positive direction, and that he did not support abandoning this DP.

HS stated that, with regard to IPv6, aggregation and single allocations to ISPs, and reducing effect on routing policy, gives staff more flexibility for allocations globally. This is why we ask organizations if they are really sure it is being applied to IPv6. It sounds like it should not be and that is a separate problem. We can add one line in the Number Resource Policy Manual (NRPM). It can be fixed in fewer sentences than what we have here.

JSp stated that with regard to the motion to abandon, he was in favor for IPv4 but not for IPv6. If it goes forward it still needs to go through ARIN 35 next April, when IPv4 will be gone, and will not have any relevance. If a rewrite removes all reference to IPv4, then he could change his vote; but, as it stood, he was in support abandoning the DP.

OD stated that he was not in favor of entirely out of region requests, but was in favor of supporting both in region and out of region needs when requesting resources.

KB stated he still supported abandoning the DP. He stated we continue to work on a complicated policy and we cannot agree. He implored the AC to split the issues out, and write separate policies.

SL stated he was against abandoning the DP. IPv4 exhaustion does not mean it is not needed. There are transfer markets in each region separately with different prices, etc. He appreciated the idea to split the items out. He believed it was necessary for IPv4, as transfers would still be occurring.

DF did not support abandoning the DP. He noted that staff is doing what we told them to do. Any ambiguity is due to us and not to staff.

MM agreed with SL’s comment that IPv4 will be an issue, but to deal with law enforcement is there a minimal level of block holdings that would qualify an organization for out of region use allocations. DA asked MM, as the shepherd of this DP, if he believed the DP to be salvageable given the disagreement in the room and its complexities. MM replied that he did believe it to be salvageable.

The motion to abandon failed with 5 in favor (CA, KB, HS, RS, JSw), 8 against (DA, BD, OD, AD, DF, SL, TM, MM), and one abstention (JSp) via roll call.

JSp stated that he had abstained, as he was unclear on the matter. The DP remains on the AC’s on docket.

The Chair called for recess at 2:25 p.m. EDT. The Chair resumed the meeting at 2:30 p.m. EDT.

The Chair stated that MM would collect input from the AC, and post new language for their review. The President stated the AC needed to request a staff and legal review immediately when the text is ready.

5. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-6: Remove 7.1 (Maintaining IN-ADDRS)

RS stated that he would work with the author for clarification, as the text needs to apply to IPv4 and not IPv6. KB stated that the DP needed to be split, as the community was adamant on IPv6. RS agreed that it could possibly turn into two proposals or two pieces within the one proposal. KB suggested removing one aspect and writing a new policy for it. RS stated the intent is to make it an IPv4 only policy.

OD moved to abandon the DP, stating that there was substantial opposition to it. There was no second on the motion, therefore, it did not move forward.

6. Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2014-9: Resolve Conflict Between RSA and 8.2 Utilization Requirements

Previously discussed.

7. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-14: Removing Needs Test from Small IPv4 Transfers

JSp stated that this DP was presented at the ARIN PPC and a great deal of feedback was received both for and against it. He believed there were more against it than in favor of it. He stated it was also presented at the ARIN PPM and similar feedback prevailed. The motives of the people in favor were fairly transparent; the motives against were less obvious. There were a number of suggestions including adjusting the threshold, removing the reference to the Registration Services Agreement, adding a reference regarding company officer attestation. He suggested revising it and presenting it at the next NANOG/ARIN PPC meeting. He expected additional proposals on this subject to come out of the ARIN PPM.

With respect to additional proposals on this topic, the President stated that it was the AC’s job to merge proposals, when appropriate, to get the work done. There are many proposals addressing the same topic on the AC’s docket and it is up to the AC drop, merge, or set aside, as appropriate. The Chair noted that 25 proposals put a strain on the AC, and there will be three new AC members next year whom will not be up to speed to handle new work.

KB supported continuing work on the DP. He believed it needed more and a better understanding of community consensus. OD agreed.

8. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-15: Allow Inter-RIR ASN Transfers

Previously discussed.

9. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-16: Section 4.10 Austerity Policy Update

It was moved by DA, and seconded by CA, that:

“The ARIN Advisory Council abandons ‘Draft Policy ARIN-2014-16: Section 4.10 Austerity Policy Update’.”

The Chair called for discussion. DA stated it was clear that people were not in favor of this DP.

The motion to abandon carried unanimously via roll call.

10. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-17: Change Utilization Requirements from Last-Allocation to Total-Aggregate

AD stated he was adding text to reflect a 50% minimum to every block, and would send it to the AC for comment. He would also be updating the draft on the AC Wiki.

11. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-18: Simplifying Minimum Allocations and Assignments

Previously discussed.

12. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-19: New MDN Allocation Based on Past Utilization

CA stated she would be requesting a staff and legal review.

13. Draft Policy ARIN-2014-20: Transfer Policy Slow-Start and Simplified Needs Verification

Previously discussed.

14. Improve Communications Group (ICG)

ICG members: BD (Group Chair), CA, JSp, and Chris Grundemann (Community member).

BD stated that he had spoken with ARIN’s CIO, Richard Jimmerson, and that BD would lead the effort to help produce documents about what the AC, as a body, does and how the AC behaves on the PPML, etc. BD had begun the draft, and realized that it wasn’t making progress with the rest of the Council. He suggested that if the document is needed, that someone else should take the lead, since he was retiring. He stated that Richard and EB might come back to the AC with regard to the document. The Chair suggested disbanding the group and to discuss it at the AC’s face to face meeting next January. It was the sense of the AC to disband the group.

15. Any Other Business

The Chair called for any other business items.

JPNIC

DA stated that when Izumi from APNIC/JPNIC was at the microphone during ARIN 34, she raised the issue of transfer policy interpretation and what it does to our policy window. The President noted that ARIN was asked the question that if RIPE changes its policy so that it’s compatible with APNIC’s (to have no needs basis), would RIPE changing its policy cause ARIN to reevaluate transfers to APNIC, if APNIC’s policy recognizes RIPE’s policy? The President noted to both RIPE and APNIC staff that our staff assessment of APNIC compatibility would not change if their policy did not change.

HS stated that our discussion is corollary to eliminating needs on transfers. She was not saying ARIN should change that, however to keep in mind the impact of the issue that APNIC reinstituted needs so that they could perform transfers with ARIN.

OD believed that we should just accept it, and not change our policy. KB stated the main concern was the ARIN community’s feelings about it. They said they like it how it is, don’t change it.

Outgoing AC Members

It was moved by OD, and seconded by SL, that:

“The ARIN Advisory Council thanks John Sweeting and Bill Darte for their many years of service to the Council.”

The motion carried by acclamation.

Post-meeting workshops

MM objected to having matters discussed after the formal meeting session as they don’t get recorded in the minutes. The Chair noted his comment.

16. Adjournment

The Chair entertained a motion to adjourn at 3:17 p.m. EDT. OD moved to adjourn, seconded by SL. The meeting adjourned with no objections.