[ppml] Last Call for Comment: Policy Proposal 2003-5

[Member Services]

The ARIN Advisory Council voted to forward the 
following policy proposal to the ARIN Board of 
Trustees for consideration. 

This is a last call for comments on this policy 
proposal prior to the ARIN Board of Trustees review. 
Comments received during this period will be included 
with the proposal when it is presented to the Board 
of Trustees for their consideration. 

Please send your comments to ppml at arin.net. This last 
call will expire at 23:59 EDT on April 30, 2003. 

Member Services 
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)


*** Last Call: Policy Proposal 2003-5 *** 

2003-5: RWhois Server Use Requirements 

Background: 

RWhois was created in part to allow ISP's locally operate and control 
their own reassignment information. The purpose of placing this data 
in a RWhois server was two-fold: 

  1) Allow RIR staff to examine reassignment utilization 
  2) Allow access to the general public on reassignment information. 

Many ISPs have opted to use RWhois servers for their reassignment 
information over sending SWIPs to ARIN. But some of the ISP's who 
have selected to use RWhois servers for their reassignment information 
have not kept the servers operational 24x7, contents of the database up 
to-date, or are restricting access only to ARIN staff. This lack of a 
uniform set of operations of RWhois servers has resulted in confusion 
for end-users and ARIN staff. 

Policy Proposal: 

Therefore, it is proposed a set of minimal requirements of operating 
a RWhois server for those ISPs who decide to use RWhois to 
manage their IP reassignment information be established and enforced. 

  The proposed minimal RWhois requirements are: 

  The RWhois server must be operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 
  to both the general public and ARIN staff. 

  The RWhois server must allow public access to reassignment information. 
  The ISP may restrict the number of queries allowed per time interval 
  from a host or subnet to defend against DDOS attacks, remote mirroring 
  attempts, and other nefarious acts. 

  The RWhois server must return reassignment information for the IP 
  address queried. The RWhois server may follow the privacy protections 
  for customers as described in the multi-homed policy. The RWhois server 
  must give customer information as described in the multi-homed policy 
  to ARIN staff. 

  The RWhois server may return results for non-IP queries. 

  The RWhois server must respond to a query with the minimal set of 
  attributes per object as defined by ARIN staff. 

  The RWhois server may include optional attributes per object that are 
  defined by the operator. 

  The RWhois server must return results that are up-to-date on 
  reassignment information. 

Note that this policy only applies to those organizations
who choose RWhois as their reassignment option.

## END ##