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

[Member Services]

This is a last call for comments on this policy proposal.  The
Advisory Council will review the comments collected during this
last call period.

The AC determined that there was community support for this policy
proposal.  The proposal text was revised by the author in response to
comments received at the Public Policy Meeting and mailing list 
discussions.

Please send your comments to ppml at arin.net.  This last call will
expire at 23:59 EST on April 5, 2004. 

Member Services 
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) 


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Policy Proposal 2003-5: Distributed Information Server Use Requirements

Author: Mark Kosters

Policy term: permanent

Policy statement:

The proposed minimal requirements for an organization 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. For residential users, the
service may follow ARIN's residential privacy policy that includes
displaying only the city, state, zip code, and country.  For all
other reassignments, the service shall follow ARIN's privacy policy
for publishing data in a public forum.

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.

Rationale:

RWhois, a distributed lookup service, was created in part to allow
ISPs to 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 ISPs 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. This 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.

Timetable for implementation: This policy should be applied 
immediately, contingent upon final approval by the Board.