[arin-ppml] How bad is it really?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

On 7/14/2010 12:03 PM, michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
>> Technically this is fraud and should be reported to hostmaster at arin.net
>
> It is not fraud, it is sloppy record keeping.
>

If it was true sloppy record keeping then logically the original
e-mail address would have still been on the POC.  The fact that the
e-mail contact address was changed to one at Verizon yet the name of
the defunct customer was NOT changed could be seen as a deliberate
rules violation.

I think we all can agree that a lot of things with IP address keeping
were done by a lot of people in the past who just didn't know the
rules.  Just like millions of people every day break speeding laws
because they don't realize they just passed a speeding sign a quarter
mile back that lowered the speed limit from 45Mph to 35Mph.  Most cops
who pull those people over won't issue a ticket (if they have a clean
record)  But they ARE violating the rules, they ARE committing a traffic
infraction, and the ARE liable for it.

What is called for in this case is ARIN issuing a notice to Verizon to 
correct that particular SWIP, just like in the traffic case what is 
called for is the cop issuing a notice and not writing a ticket for 
going 45 in a 35 zone.

> I have worked for several large telcos over the years and every single one
> of them had serious problems with slack (or non-existent) decommissioning
> processes. One company that I worked for 10 years ago, did an audit and
> discovered that they were paying $2 million dollars per month for tail
> circuits which had been disconnected, sometimes for years. Most of them
> were still plugged into router ports which may have made it easier to
> identify them. The big question was whether or not there were other tail
> circuits that were just dangling from a patch panel after the router port
> had been reused.
>
> While you can generally make a business case for running an audit every year
> or two to mop up these decommissioning oversights, these audits often do
> not extend to cleaning up all the records, especially not IP address records
>
> If there are any IP address records.
>
> A lot of ISPs, even very big ones, rely far too much on spreadsheets for
> this, even when they have commercial IP Address Management tools in place
> for their DHCP-related customers. Meanwhile, Fred in engineering has a
> spreadsheet that collects errors and oversights and eventually gets lost
> when Fred retires.
>
> We really should force large providers to run their own whois directory
> rather than SWIPing transactions into ARIN. There could be some sort of
> mirroring protocol for ARIN to keep in sync every week or so. This would
> be more likely to be connected to a live OSS/BSS system that has up to
> date data.
>

ipplan supposedly has a back end that generates SWIPS.  But it does not
do IPv6

HaCi (http://sourceforge.net/projects/haci/) does both IPv4 and IPv6, 
that's what we use.  But there is no interconnect code to the ARIN WHOIS 
database.  Periodically when I have the time I try to work on some
very kludgy scripts to feed the data to the reference rwhois code
database. (which we also run)

FreeIPdb (http://home.globalcrossing.net/~freeipdb/)  does both IPv4 and
IPv6 - there's an rwhois portion "in development"  (don't hold your 
breath, it's been in development for 4 years now)

Netdot (https://netdot.uoregon.edu/trac/) also manages IP space but 
there is no interconnect code to the ARIN WHOIS database.

All of these are open source.  All work.  And HaCi is in my opinion
the best candidate to add a RESTful interface to.  I would love to
see the ARIN WHOIS developers add one to that code.  I'd be happy to
setup a system for them to use for development that had a running
HaCi install on it.

Ted