Behind the Scenes at ARIN’s Government Affairs Department
Recently, ARIN’s Governments Affairs Department (GAD) staff attended the International Telecommunications Union Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Study Group 13 (SG13) meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on 28 October-6 November 2025. Typically, the GAD team prefers virtual participation to minimize travel costs, but ITU rules and procedures required in-person attendance for this SG13 meeting due to certain decisional work items on the agenda.
In this case a contribution titled “ITU-T Y.2086: “Framework and Requirements of Decentralization Trustworthy Network Infrastructure” warranted our on-site attention. Y.2086 was a draft ITU-T telecommunications standard that had been in an extended last call for more than four years. It proposed a framework for using distributed ledger technology to administer (receive, review, and issue) Internet number resources (IPv4, IPv6, and Autonomous System Numbers) as well as domain names.
ARIN is not opposed to using a distributed ledger technology to manage Internet number resources provided there is consensus from the Internet community — specifically network operators — supporting such an approach, but it was unclear if Y.2086 had any networking community support. Furthermore, Y.2086 suggested that the review and approval of Internet number resources be subject to peer review: e.g. by network operators from competing Internet service providers. ARIN raised this issue, along with other questions and concerns, in its contribution to SG13 in February 2023. Since that time, ARIN continued to raise concerns with the draft standard both in oral meeting comments and in comments made on-the-record in meeting reports.
In preparation for the Tashkent meeting, ARIN submitted a Y.2086-related contribution proposing that work on it stop and the draft standard be deleted from SG13 as a work item. Despite uncertain odds of success, ARIN, along with other similarly minded ITU members, was able to get Y.2086 removed as a work item — resulting in a significant positive outcome for the Regional Internet Registry system as well as the network operations community.
It is possible we will see a similar new work item appear at SG13 in the future, or, for that matter, that we will encounter other items requiring GAD team intervention within any of the ITU’s other study groups that we actively monitor and/or participate in. As an associate, non-state, member of the ITU, ARIN’s Government Affairs Department will persevere in addressing such matters, collaborating closely with other associate and state members to perform its important work on behalf of the ARIN community.
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