[arin-ppml] ARIN Multiple Discrete Networks Policy

[John Curran]

On Oct 4, 2011, at 10:36 AM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:08 AM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
>> We have to pace our development efforts, and provide incremental
>> improvements in multiple areas at once (ARIN Online registration
>> capabilities, Online billing support, RESTful enhancements, IRR
>> improvements, RPKI development, etc.)  We haven't given up on
>> further ARIN Online/IRR integration, but need to prioritize the
>> work and sometimes this means doing things next year to keep this
>> year's expenses within plan.
> 
> It's worth mentioning that you stated the reason for ARIN needing from
> March (?) until August to do something simple, like enable support for
> passwords and PGP, in the ARIN IRR was that your I.T. folks intended
> to integrate the IRR with other ARIN services.  I point this out
> because I strongly believe that your I.T. staff is inadequate and
> needs a great deal of improvement.

Thanks for your perspective on this; I obviously do not agree (but
that's to be expected - If I had, I would have addressed it already)

> Not only did a simple task to address a very critical security concern
> which could have been exploited by "bad guys" at any time (and still
> could, while many mntners remain without passwords/etc) get ballooned
> into a larger project which was to take many months, but you then
> missed your projected completion date by a month or two and had to
> back-peddle and do what I originally suggested: take care of the
> security concern urgently, and look at a more sophisticated
> integration later on.

There was quite a bit of work involved behind the scenes to make
this happen (but that's likely not apparent)

> If ARIN needs to have a larger I.T. budget to get things done, I for
> one am happy to advise my clients to vote in favor of fee increases.

We've never raised fees, and that's not the general direction that
I've been given in the past by the Board.  In fact, we've lowered
them 4 (or 5?) times since ARIN's inception, and I do not believe
that such has had any impact on our services.  In fact, we've done 
more automation work in the last 2 1/2 year than we've done in the 
history of ARIN, and you can review the development achievements
here: <https://www.arin.net/features/index.html>

> TCAM and tree-based look-up engines with a large memory capacity (for
> DFZ routes) are expensive to operate.  They use a lot of power,
> produce a lot of heat, and limit the density of routers.  The more
> routes there are in the DFZ, the more money we all spend on the next
> generation of routers to handle that growth.
> 
> The larger the DFZ, the more CPU is needed to converge in a reasonable
> period of time (see Richard Steenbergen's many posts on this topic
> lately.)  Since single-core performance is not growing much anymore,
> vendors are now looking at parallel route processing, with a big R&D
> expense to deliver this capability and associated performance
> improvement.  IETF is producing various ideas on how to pre-populate
> repair paths into the network.

Acknowledged (although many of us opted for MPLS and fast reroute paths 
for similar capabilities in architecting for specific path failures in 
advance)

> There is a great deal of work going on to maintain the reliability of
> the Internet as the DFZ continues to grow, but really, not much at all
> is being done to constrain the DFZ in the most sensible manner -- by
> reducing unnecessary routes introduced simply by mistake.
> 
> If ARIN needs to spend a million dollars to write some Perl scripts,
> by all means, spend it.  When you consider the long-term cost of a
> continually growing DFZ, and ever-increasing FIB memory (heat/power)
> to keep up with it, there is no "greener" I.T. project that ARIN could
> undertake, and none with a better cost / benefit equation to the
> community, than investing in a more sensible DFZ.

Please make a concrete proposal for discussion by this community.  It
would be quite timely, since myself and the staff are presently trying
to prioritize the 2012 budget and looking forward to input here and at
the Public Policy Meeting next week.

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN