[arin-ppml] Petition Underway - Policy Proposal 95: CustomerConfidentiality - Time Sensitive

Tue Feb 2 07:52:05 EST 2010

As a regional ISP with a mix of colo customers ranging from real big- 
co's to ma-pa-co's all the way down to the "someday we are going to  
be..." futon-co's, I wholly agree that IP sub allocation contact data  
should be discretionary to the ISP.  Some would say "you just don't  
want your competitors looking up the phone numbers for your client's  
tech contacts if you ever have an outage" and I would honestly answer,  
well yeah, that too!  But honestly, other than that there would  
actually be no use to reaching out to many of my customers "tech"  
contacts, so why do this?  They are not all here (in colo) just  
because our air conditioning and power are well conditioned, and  
facilities secure.  They are here so that if they get into trouble of  
various kinds we can help them because we are reachable.  Calling them  
only delays this process by the extra steps of reaching them first.   
What if they change thier number and forget to let us know?  Believe  
me, for the orgs large enough to handle these issues there is a mutual  
and natural incentive to put thier contact data into the swip.  Leave  
the discretion where it belongs IMHO in the hands of the people who  
have always made this community work, the ISPs.

Best regards,
Vaughn

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 2, 2010, at 6:26 AM, <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:

>>> And what happens when that "someone else"'s 10th grade
>> English class
>>> is interrupted by your phone call about a possible botnet
>> infection on
>>> his uncle's server?
>>
>> ...then the IP was SWIP'ed to a school, and the uncle
>> shouldn't have a server within the school network IP allocation.
>
> A 10th grade kid's extracurricular activities have nothing
> whatsoever to do with the school's network. We've already
> been told that this is a small photography business that
> has a server colocated with their local ISP. Since the
> business owners are experts in photography, it is reasonable
> to assume that the server and networking expertise comes
> from outside the photography business. Since it is a very
> small business, it is reasonable to assume that they hire
> tech support as and when needed, not on retainer and not
> on-call 24x7. It is also reasonable to assume that they
> would shop around for the best price for said tech support
> and a 10th-grade nephew is highly likely to fit the profile
> of cheap tech support. However, said 10th grade nephew has
> other obligations such as attending school, and keeping their
> mobile phone turned off while on the school premises.
>
> Why on earth do you want to polute the whois directory with
> thousands of phone numbers for 10th grader's mobile phones?
> And the number of such tech support people is growing at the
> same time that their age is dropping. I would not be surprised
> to learn that their are 8th graders now looking after colocated
> servers, or VPS root servers.
>
>>> Let's be realistic here. This is not the Internet of 1990 where
>>> everything was in a big building owned by a big
>> organization that was
>>> paying big bucks for the underlying IT infrastructure that was
>>> connected to the Internet.
>>
>> ...I want to know how to get a hold of the person/people who
>> are managing the machines that are addressed.
>
> Then the whois directory needs a system for recording stuff like:
> "Technical contact is attending school between the hours of
> 8:30 to 4:30 EST, Mondays thru Fridays. Saturdays from 10:00 to
> 12:00 he is playing baseball. Contactable at (604)555-1234
> other times except when he is on a hot date which is most
> likely Thursday thru Saturday evenings EST."
>
> If you have a look through the RIPE database you will see that
> they do have long complicated notes about who and how to contact
> various support departments, although I've never seen one quite
> like the above example.
>
> I really do not understand why people do not support the basic
> and fundamental principle of only recording contact information
> in the whois directory for people who are READY, WILLING and ABLE
> to TAKE ACTION when contacted. What good is it to have mobile
> numbers that ring through to voicemail or contact people who,
> although they set up the server themselves 3 months ago, have
> more or less forgotten all the technical details that they barely
> grasped in the first place. It really should be up to ISPs to
> manage their customers, and the rest of us should contact the
> ISPs who have 24x7 support people who are READY, WILLING and ABLE
> to TAKE ACTION when contacted. If this were the standard way
> to do things, then ISP contracts would have standard clauses
> that allow them to unplug servers until the owner can be contacted
> and arrangements made to clean up the problems.
>
> As for servers that are not accepting incoming email or similar
> things, that is not your problem and it is not ARIN's problem.
> We can't boil the sea.
>
> --Michael Dillon
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