[ppml] Staff Comments Regarding Policy Proposal 2006-3

[Suzanne Woolf]

On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 03:38:35PM +0100, Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com wrote:
> > Having an authenticated 
> > list of authorized prefix originations will probably be simpler and
> > faster measure for ARIN to implement.
> 
> Yes, and that is what I would like to see ARIN
> get involved with. No grand scheme, just some solid
> straighforward implementation work.

Getting back to the policy for a moment....

The policy directs ARIN to make it easy for people to associate their
route and AS data through ARIN if they want to. That association is
input for a lot of possible mechanisms that could be used for the
larger goal of authenticating route originations.

The discussion of what mechanism, if any, ARIN itself should support
in the operational context-- the certification system currently under
development/discussion among multiple RIRs, or something else-- is
interesting and extremely important. However, Policy Proposal 2006-3
doesn't constrain that discussion; it seems to be compatible with
promoting any of the mechanisms contemplated.

When the proposal was first discussed at the previous Public Policy
meeting, it had limited support as written. But when the room was
polled on the related question of whether ARIN should be supporting
activity to promote route certification, there seemed to be a strong
consensus that it should. That input to the AC was the difference
between abandoning the proposal and deciding to keep it in the process
and work with it further.

Support for this policy proposal makes it easier for ARIN to promote
the association of routes and AS numbers in a form that can be
published by ARIN or republished by others as part of a system for
greater security in Internet routing. It allows people to replace
outdated or missing information in ARIN's and other IRRs or other data
repositories in a way that will be better authenticated to start with
and, we hope, better maintained.

Regardless of what publication mechanism and operational
infrastructure you like for using the data, this seems like a Good
Thing(tm) to me. The question for the Public Policy meeting is whether
it's enough of a Good Thing(tm) to justify the effort, as described in
the staff analysis.


Suzanne Woolf
ARIN AC
(personal opinions)