Dear SIG members,

The proposal, 'Frequent whois information update request', has been sent to the Policy SIG for review. It will be presented at the Policy SIG at APNIC 30 at the Gold Coast, Australia, 24-27 August 2010 .

We invite you to review and comment on the proposal on the mailing list before the meeting.

The comment period on the mailing list before an APNIC meeting is an important part of the policy development process. We encourage you to express your views on the proposal:

- Do you support or oppose this proposal? - Does this proposal solve a problem you are experiencing? If so, tell the community about your situation. - Do you see any disadvantages in this proposal? - Is there anything in the proposal that is not clear? - What changes could be made to this proposal to make it more effective?

Information about this and other policy proposals is available from:

http://www.apnic.net/policy/proposals/prop-084

Randy, Ching-Heng, and Terence

________________________________________________________________________

prop-084-v001: Frequent whois information update request ________________________________________________________________________

Author: Tobias Knecht tk@abusix.com

Version: 1

Date: 2 July 2010

1. Introduction ----------------

This is a proposal for APNIC to regularly contact all APNIC current account holders with resources in the APNIC Whois Database to ask them to actively check that all their details in whois are up to date.

To actively check details, the object owner has to log into the MyAPNIC Portal and acknowledge the accuracy of data in their object(s) or update all existing objects if needed. The update date will be shown in the "changed" attribute of every single object.

2. Summary of current problem ------------------------------

Whois database data accuracy has been a big issue for years now. There have been several approaches to get better data accuracy within whois information all over the world.

There are two main reasons for data inaccuracy in whois:

a) Wrong data are published to camouflage illegal actions.

b) Wrong data are published because object owners forget to update the whois information as changes occur within their organization (staff changes, etc)

A secondary problem is data incompleteness:

- Sometimes, there are changes to the structure of whois data, such as additional mandatory objects or attributes (for example, the IRT object). Object owners usually do not immediately make these changes to the objects they are responsible for. So there are always data missing in the whois database.

3. Situation in other RIRs ---------------------------

ARIN conducts an annual POC (point of contact) validation process:

https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#three6

There is no similar proposal or policy in other RIRs; however, if the current APNIC proposal is successful in the APNIC region, the author plans to submit a similar proposal for AfriNIC, LACNIC, and RIPE regions.

4. Details of the proposal ---------------------------

It is proposed that APNIC:

4.1 Send an update notification for all existing objects to the corresponding responsible organization once every X months.

This notification will explain that object owners must log in the MyAPNIC Portal and verify all objects they are responsible for.

The objects covered by this proposal are:

- inetnum - inet6num - aut-num - person - role - irt

Object owners must actively click and aknowledge the correctness of the objects they are responsible for.

- If an object needs updating, or a new object needs to be added (for example, an IRT object), the owner can do this via MyAPNIC.

- If a new object or attribute is made mandatory via another APNIC policy, then the responsible organization will be required to make this update, if not already made, at the time of notification.

Even if the owner only verifies existing data and has not made any changes, the "changed" attribute in the whois database objects will include the date the owner verified the object. This will give users of whois an idea on how recently the object owner verified the accuracy of the data.

4.2 Send update notifications to responsible organizations at times shorter than the regular period described in section 4.1 if APNIC is made aware that the organization's object contain invalid information.

For example, APNIC would send such a notification if notified of invalid information via the form at:

http://www.apnic.net/invalidcontact

4.3 Include a link in all whois output to APNIC form for reporting invalid contact information.

5. Advantages and disadvantages of the proposal ------------------------------------------------

5.1 Advantages

- A frequent reminder and the need to actively verify will solve the problem of forgetting to update objects.

- All objects will follow the latest requirements for registration in the APNIC Whois Database. For example if there is an mandatory field added within X months every object will be updated.

- More people will use the MyAPNIC Portal.

5.2 Disadvantages

- No disadvantages are foreseen.

6. Effect on APNIC members ---------------------------

Members have to update or verify their objects once every X months.

7. Effect on NIRs ------------------

It would be of benefit to the whole Internet community if NIRs were to implement a similar service to keep their whois database up to date. But this would be another proposal.