Community Grant Program Recipients

2025 ARIN Community Grant Program Recipients

Project summaries provided by grant recipients.

Augmenting GNU AutoGen to Support Hugo Markdown as a Documentation Stanza Markup Format

Network Time Foundation
Talent, Oregon
Project funding: US$14,000

In 2009, the NTP Project spearheaded an effort to enhance the documentation production capabilities of GNU AutoGen, allowing for automatic markup conversion of documentation stanzas to format-specific outputs.

For example, a program’s “DESCRIPTION” would be created in one place using a specific markup language (mdoc(7), for example), and GNU AutoGen would produce properly specified mdoc(7), man(7), GNU Texinfo, and HTML pages that used that DESCRIPTION. This system has been working very well.

Recently, the NTP Project has done an initial overhaul of its web properties as part of a more general overhaul of NTF web properties. As part of this effort we have replaced all of our Wordpress sites and manually-maintained HTML sites with Hugo, which generates static websites with a consistent look and feel. These sites are also much more secure and require far less CPU and memory to operate well.

Having the ability to emit the NTP Documentation in Hugo Markdown will greatly ease our website and documentation management, and make it much easier for us to reorganize, overhaul, and greatly improve the NTP documentation. Having Hugo Markdown as a supported documentation type will allow us to support better and broader documentation support for other NTF projects, and also be of potential significant benefit to any other projects that use GNU AutoGen.

Today, GNU AutoGen’s documentation processing is handled by a set of scripts that automatically translate stanza content from {man,mdoc, texi} to {man,mdoc,texi}. For those familiar with Unix, the case of translating from one of these formats to itself is to simply use /bin/cat.

To add Hugo Markdown to this list we:

• Add HMD to the list of known markup types in the GNU AutoGen .def file processor
• Create {man,mdoc,texi} 2hmd scripts, converting the known man, mdoc, and texi directives into Hugo Markdown directives
• Create {man,mdoc,texi} 2hmd scripts, converting the known man, mdoc, and texi directives into Hugo Markdown directives
• Create hmd2 {man,mdoc,texi} scripts, converting the Hugo Markdown directives into man, mdoc, and texi directives
• If we have the time, implement an automated test suite that will give us what amounts to unit testing and regression testing for GNU AutoGen’s documentation markup processing

IPv6 Test Pod

Internet2
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Project funding: US$16,000

The IPv6 Test Pod project came about while I was setting up a lab to test an IPv6-only network as well as technologies that can help in that transition, such as DNS64/NAT64. My goal was to try out client applications on my phone and laptop and observe the behavior.

To test this, I created a wifi network for dual-stack, IPv6-only, and one that runs DNS64/NAT64. Each piece of technology to get this working was simple in and of itself, but piecing it all together proved to be a drawn-out and error prone process. I was also lucky enough to have 1) a background in both network engineering and systems administration 2) equipment on my home network that’s capable 3) motivation to set this up and 4) a very understanding spouse.

I believe that it would be valuable for people in the IT community (such as an application developer or support personnel) to have easy access to these networks to test and patch applications. I’m inspired by projects such as RIPE ATLAS that have made use of low-cost hardware at no cost to participants to reach a large audience.

This project seeks to solve this problem by developing an inexpensive solution using off-the-shelf hardware, coined an IPv6 Test Pod. The devices make use of a NAT-friendly tunneling technology such as Wireguard to create a tunnel for IPv6 access. Pre-configured Wifi SSIDs provide access to several test networks including a dual-stack network, an IPv6-only network, DNS64/NAT64, 464XLAT enabled networks, and “IPv6 Mostly” networks.

Additionally, wired Ethernet jacks may be available depending on hardware platform. These devices come pre-configured and the participant only needs to plug in an uplink port into an existing network, connect a client device to a Wifi SSID or Ethernet port, and start testing the application. To accomplish the desired objectives, the project will use the grant funding to purchase additional hardware and distribute The first year of the IPv6 Pod project was made possible by the ARIN 2023 grant and distributed 32 units to applicants in the ARIN region.

This grant application’s focus is broadening the impact of the project since setup and setup and technical hurdles have been solved. Since hardware and technology has been selected, the project would jump into purchasing hardware for distribution and in parallel an outreach effort to encourage additional applicants by those interested in testing IPv6-only/mostly networks. Once participants are selected, they will be sent an IPv6 Test Pod at no cost. After being deployed, the project will follow up with participants to gather feedback on the usefulness of the pods and any issues that the pods helped diagnose. There is no expectation that the hardware will be returned to the project. If hardware is returned to the project, it will be distributed to another participant.

The personas the project is seeking out include but are not limited to:

• An App Developer who wants to test a client-side application with only access to IPv6 or with access to IPv4 only through DNS64/NAT64.
• An IT Support Technician who has been tasked to test client-side applications with only access to IPv6 or with access to IPv4 only through DNS64/NAT64.
• A Network Engineer who has been tasked with setting up an IPv6 test environment, but may not have access to equipment capable of performing DNS64/NAT64.

The direct beneficiaries of the project are the participant performing the testing, the owner of any application being tested, or an organization seeking to test applications that employees use. Indirect beneficiaries include the general public who use any application being tested, network operators who are looking to retire IPv4 networks, or the IT community in general as knowledge and lessons about operating in networks without direct access to IPv4 begins to disseminate.

The broader impact of the project is to prepare the world for operating without IPv4. This includes preparing the software, preparing the technical skills of software developers, but also helping people and organizations believe that it is possible.

From Raw to Ready: Visualizing RDAP with RegCtl

20C
Chicago, Illinois
Project funding: $20,000

This project is a follow-up to the previously funded ARIN Community Grant that supported the development of RegCtl, a command-line tool that normalizes RDAP data from global Internet registries. Building on that foundation, we now propose to develop a modern, responsive web interface for RegCtl, making its normalized registry data broadly accessible and easy to use.

Accessing and interpreting registry data remains challenging due to inconsistencies across RIR RDAP implementations. This project addresses that by providing a clean, intuitive web frontend, built using Vue and Vuetify, with dedicated views for ASNs, IP addresses, prefixes, and domains. Users will be able to search and navigate by identifier, with consistent formatting and contextual explanations that enhance understanding.

By improving usability and visibility of standardized registry data, this project supports ARIN’s mission to promote technical clarity, transparency, and responsible resource management. The web interface will display both raw and normalized data and will serve as a valuable educational and operational tool for network operators, researchers, educators, and policy professionals.

The tool will be open source, freely available, and designed for easy integration and extension by the community. Ultimately, it will strengthen the registry ecosystem across the ARIN region and beyond.