[ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-5: RWhois Server Use Requirements

[Member Services]

This policy proposal was discussed at the previous Public Policy
Meeting and on the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List.  In accordance
with those discussions the following policy proposal text will be
carried forward and discussed at the upcoming Public Policy Meeting.

ARIN welcomes feedback and discussion about the following policy 
proposal in the weeks leading to the ARIN Public Policy Meeting 
in Chicago, Illinois, scheduled for October 22-23, 2003. All feedback 
received on the mailing list about this policy proposal will be 
included in the discussions that will take place at the upcoming 
Public Policy Meeting. 

This policy proposal discussion will take place on the ARIN Public 
Policy Mailing List. Subscription information is available at
http://www.arin.net/mailing_lists/index.html 

Member Services 
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) 

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Policy Proposal 2003-5: RWhois Server Use Requirements

Background:

RWhois, a distributed lookup service, 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. The following policy proposal
will describe the set of minimal requirements of operating a RWhois
server for those ISPs who decide to use RWhois to manage their IP 
reassignment information.

In the future, there may be other distributed lookup services that
ARIN may allow ISPs to use. These new services must be approved by
ARIN before being allowed to serve as a repository for reassignment
information.

Policy Proposal:

The proposed minimal requirements for an ISP to setup a distributed
information service to advertise reassignment information are:

The distributed information service must be operational 24 hours a day,
7 days a week to both the general public and ARIN staff. The service is 
allowed reasonable downtime for server maintenance according to
generally accepted community standards.

The distributed information service must allow public access to
reassignment information. The service 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 distributed information service must return reassignment
information for the IP address queried. The service may allow for
privacy protections for customers. Minimally, the service must provide
only the person's name, city, state, zip code, and country. The street
address will be replaced by the words "Private Residence," and the
upstream's POC will serve as the customer's contact.

The distributed information service may return results for non-IP queries.

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

The distributed information service may include optional attributes per
object that are defined locally.

The distributed information service must return results that are
up-to-date on reassignment information.