[arin-discuss] The joy of SWIPping

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Anyone 
> trying to contact one of my customers for any legitimate 
> reason is better served by contacting my company first.  
> We're here 24/7, we're technically competent, and we have 
> better customer contact information in our billing/CRM 
> databases than we could ever make available through SWIP.

This is the big flaw of the whois directory, which is where
your SWIP data is published. It does not provide any way
for users of the directory to know who has a competent
functioning contact point, and who does not. 

A few years ago, I proposed that we scrap all of the data
except the records for organizations with a direct ARIN
contractual relationship, and any other organizations who
would commit to having a contact point that was READY,
WILLING, and ABLE to ACT on incoming complaints. This proposal
got lost in the noise of the political gamesmanship that is
the ARIN policy process, in other words, most members probably
didn't even know that such a thing was possible.

The whois directory badly needs to be reformed but this can't
happen until we can get some agreement on what the purpose
and scope of SWIP data really is. It is no longer used to
count users in order to justify DARPA funding, but the directory
is largely unchanged since the pre-Internet era. Why are listings
in the directory? What is an appropriate use of the directory?
Once we answer those questions, it will be obvious what data needs
to be added and what data must be removed.

Enabling ARIN to evaluate an organization's use of IP address space
is not an appropriate use of the whois directory. This can be better
determined by information provided in confidence to ARIN under the
NDA that is part of the contract between members and ARIN.

> I think my company's information should be the only 
> information listed in Whois and we should allowed to 
> responsibly field any inquiries sent to it.

I strongly agree. People allow their phone numbers to go in 
the phone directory because they are willing to accept calls.
Those who are not willing to accept calls, have unlisted numbers.
The whois directory should be the same. If you are unable to
deal with network operational problems, or simply don't want
to deal with them, then ARIN should not force ISPs to publish
contact data in the whois directory.

You can read the second draft of my proposal from 2004 here
http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2004_4.html
I even allowed for publishing anonymous entries that had some
type information that could be used by researchers who count things
like business use vs. educational vs. consumer.

--Michael Dillon