[ARIN-Suggestions] Response and Closing of ACSP 2019.15: Method of Remote Participation

[ARIN]

On 29 May, we issued a closing response to ACSP 2019.15: Method of 
Remote Participation. Please see the full text of our response and the
suggestion below or online at:

https://www.arin.net/vault/participate/acsp/suggestions/2019-15.html

Response:


Thank you for your suggestion, numbered 2019.15 upon confirmed receipt, 
requesting that ARIN revert from Slack to an IRC solution for remote 
participation because Slack is does not support IPv6, or to offer 
multiple chat options to enable IPv6 remote participation.

This suggestion raises an interesting conundrum. As you noted, ARIN does 
have a stated goal of supporting IPv4 and IPv6 where possible, and we 
make a every effort to do so. However, in the case of remote 
participation, we had a long history of user problems our previous 
solution, Jabber, an XMP service which we used from 2008 to 2017. So 
much so, that another community member submitted ACSP 2017.7 
recommending we switch to Slack to make our remote chat convenient for 
participants. See: 
https://www.arin.net/vault/participate/acsp/suggestions/2017-7.html

While we continue to encourage Slack to step up their progress towards 
supporting IPv6, we do intend to continue to use this service because it 
offers a superior user experience for our remote participants. Adding a 
second remote participation channel would add a layer of support 
complexity that would potentially degrade the experience of all remote 
participants.

We certainly do understand your concern, and struggle with this issue 
across all ARIN services on an ongoing basis. We will continue to make 
every effort to ensure we are using services that are available over 
both IPv4 and IPv6 when services that meet our community's needs are 
available.

Thank you for participating in the ARIN Suggestion and Consultation 
Process. This suggestion is now closed.


Suggestion:


Description: Revert from Slack back to IRC for remote meeting 
participation (or allow IRC as an alternative) to enable IPv6 remote 
participation.

Value to Community: IRC enabled remote participation via both IPv4 and 
IPv6. Slack is currently IPv4 only. Per the closing of 2019-13, ARIN has 
a stated goal of supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 as long as both are in 
common/widespread use. Using Slack (only) is in violation of that stated 
goal.




Regards,

Communications and Member Services
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)