[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2016-8: Removal of Indirect POC Validation Requirement

[David R Huberman]

Hello,

1) As far as I can tell from the archives, the last time the ARIN public 
policy community formally reviewed the POC Validation policy was in 2008.

2) In the intervening 8 years, staff have reported to the community at 
numerous junctures that the workload associated with POC validation of 
indirectly-registered resources is a larger proportion of their time spent 
than perhaps the community may want it to be. Or put a different way, ARIN 
has repeatedly informed the community that they're spending a whole heck 
of a lot of time on it.

3) ARIN continues to run as a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit. And it is 
important that all stakeholders continually re-evaluate how we want our 
limited resources used.

As a direct result of the above, the draft policy proposal aims to focus 
staff on the following types of number resource regisration records:

- direct allocations
- direct assignments
- AS numbers
- reallocations (which are generally designed to be used by ISPs to 
reallocate to other ISPs, who then reassign further downstream)

The draft policy accomplishes this by removing POC validation attempts at 
a single class of resources:

- reassignments

Historically, reassignments were most often /29s.  Often assigned by a DSL 
provider or a CableCo or the like, there was a stated pecuniary value in 
the upstream listing downstream POCs to cut down on abuse calls/emails. 
(Indeed, many ISPs had a formal policy of only reassigning blocks to 
customers after POC information had been obtained, because they felt it 
would reduce the volume of work on their abuse desks.)

Bottom line:

If the staff spent the same amount of time it does today on working with 
direct registrants (and reallocated registrants) on POC validation, as it 
does today working on /29 SWIP reassignment POCs who don't know who ARIN 
is, I assert the overall value of the data in Whois would be increased for 
the internet community.  Hence this proposal.

David