ARIN XIX, April 22-25
ARIN is organization responsible for registration of Internet Protocol
addressing parameters in portions of North America. Addressing parameters
include IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses and autonomous systems numbers.
ARIN's geographical responsibility is roughly Canada, the United States,
and
some of the Caribbean islands. The remainder of the globe is covered by
four organizations - LACNIC, AFRINIC, APNIC, and RIPE. Collectively the
five organization also form the NRO (Number Resource Organization) and all
are essentially subservient registries to IANA (Internet Assigned
Number Authority) which is run by ICANN.
ARIN XIX is one instance of a semi-annual event at which proposed changes
to ARIN's policies are discussed and other items of interest are aired.
The
spring meetings are generally stand-alone, the fall meetings are in
conjunction
with NANOG (North American Network Operating Group). The impact is that
the
spring meetings are heavier on policy and lighter on operational input. In
fact, the first person to speak, and a quite frequent commentator during
the
session was the ARIN legal council (lawyer).
During this meeting there were 13 policy change proposals considered and
two panel sessions. The meeting was preceded by an email frenzy on an ARIN
supported list which made it possible to run through the work items
quickly.
The two main issues discussed were the problem of legacy IPv4 address
assignments and the coming exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. Only the latter
had a policy directly tied to it. Most of the policies were minor changes
to the existing policy document.
Legacy IPv4 addresses refer to addresses (and autonomous system numbers)
handed
out prior to the creation of any of the regional Internet registries (RIPE
being the first formed). During that period of history there were no
formal
agreements or contracts governing the "handing out" of the resources.
Legacy holders cause a burden to the ARIN (and other RIR) mission because
these holders do make use of the ARIN facilities to update their records
but are not required to carry any cost burden. On the other hand, the real
beneficiaries of the updates by the legacy holders are ARIN members and
others using the Internet - so one cannot simply drop the legacy holders as
"deadbeats."
IPv4 addresses are becoming scarce. The last available "new" address will
be assigned or allocated in the next five years. There is much debate on
how much time is exactly left, there are all sorts of models tossed about.
In some models, there will soon be a market to buy and sell the addresses
although it is not clear if anyone can "legally" sell the resources. For
RIR-granted resources, the answer is assumed to be no, but for the legacy,
there is no agreement to look towards for an answer.
One policy proposal was submitted, but defeated/abandoned that tried to
help
control the end of IPv4 address assignment. That proposal wanted to set a
date for the end to let people prepare for the end. There has been no
solid
alternative yet proposed. (The proposal put forth is the same as one
presented at the APNIC meeting in March.)
Of the remaining dozen proposals, 3 dealt with security over data
submission
to ARIN, whether PGP and/or X.509 can be used to sign email. Currently all
input to ARIN is via email, there are no registrars involved. Some of the
other RIRs have been looking at EPP, but not in North America.
Three more proposals were edits to the IPv6 policies. The author of the
three is trying to make IPv6 easier to obtain, presumably under the
assumption
that the reason for the slow adoption of the technology is the fault of
the RIR organizations. The three proposals are minor wording edits, still
only one was adopted.
DNS was not prominently mentioned in this meeting. ARIN does have an
unfinished Lame Delegation policy which was mentioned as "being worked on"
during the Engineering report.
