[arin-discuss] Template-based email as a third registry access method (was: Bringing back IP resource Request Templates)

[John Curran]

On Apr 2, 2012, at 2:27 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:

> A while back, ARIN stopped accepting email templates for resource requests.
> 
> I believe in the discussions at members meetings prior to this, we were assured that the addition of a web interface would not remove the ability to use templates and I, for one, find templates to be much easier and more convenient than a web interface (especially the current state of ARIN on-line).
> 
> Suggestion 2011.21 was submitted as an effort to address this. It is my understanding that 2011.21 has not received any support from the membership. If any of you are interested in having template functionality restored, ARIN needs to know that. If not, likely this suggestion is soon to be closed without any action and templates will forever fade into history.

Owen - 
 
 To be clear, we do accept some mail templates (those which have been
 modified to contain an API key to secure the request) for many common 
 operations, including Point-of-Contact (POC) and Org changes, delegation 
 of resources, etc.   You can see the full list of requests which are
 supported via email templates here: 
   <https://www.arin.net/resources/interacting.html>

 ARIN decommissioned some extremely old systems which handled the original
 email templates, as we needed to move to a single consistent database and
 these systems were not maintainable.  As part of moving to the new system 
 (capable of supporting ARIN Online, and RESTful interfaces, etc), we built 
 a backward compatibility interface for select email templates for the most 
 commonly used functions (i.e. SWIP & related tasks) but did not do all  
 requests since that would have been a much larger effort and would have 
 required significant upkeep whenever number resource policy changed.
 We cannot just "restore" the template functionality; it would instead 
 require a development effort to implement further shims for each type 
 of resource request email template that you want created. 

 I will note that in 2011 we received 3,269 IP requests (for IPv4 and IPv6 
 resources) and 1,644 ASN requests; i.e. a total of 4,913 requests for new
 number resources, and the vast majority of these were made via ARIN Online.  
 While we've heard lots of positive feedback on the web-based ARIN Online
 system and the RESTful interfaces that folks are now using for building
 automation between their systems and ARIN, we are very interested any 
 improvements that can be made to the registry systems and it is simply
 a question of prioritization for development and maintenance resources.
 
 If there is demand for also having email templates as an ongoing third 
 form of access, then this is definitely something that the ARIN Board 
 needs to be made aware of, as it will permanently increase the ongoing 
 effort for future maintenance of the registry to carry this method for 
 resources requests in addition to the web-based ARIN Online and the 
 RESTful programmatic interfaces to the registry.  There hasn't been
 much discussion of this topic so it is hard to gauge demand, but it is
 important for everyone to realize that implementing and maintaining the
 additional access method of template email for all requests (as opposed 
 to just the current subset) will definitely increase our costs (the 
 actual amount will vary based on rate and type of policy changess) and 
 increasing costs is not the direction provided to me by the ARIN Board.

 I would encourage further discussion on this list and in Vancouver.

Thanks for raising this topic!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN