ARIN Has a Testing Environment — and Most People Don't Know About It

By Brad Gorman – Director of Customer Technical Services

At last month’s ARIN 57 Public Policy and Members Meeting, an RPKI Deep Dive workshop attendee asked me an important question — but it wasn’t about the Resource Public Key Infrastructure. It was something simpler: He didn’t know ARIN had a testing environment. 

He’s not alone. If it’s news to you, too, read on to learn about this valuable and easy-to-access tool. 

What Is OT&E?

The Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) environment is not a limited preview or a stripped-down demo. It offers full feature parity with production — same services, same interface, same data structure — but completely isolated from live systems. Anything you do in OT&E stays in OT&E.

This means you can log in to ARIN Online at www.ote.arin.net with your regular credentials and do virtually everything you can do in production: create and modify Org records, manage Points of Contact, submit network requests, track tickets, test reassignments and reallocations, manage IRR route objects, experiment with RPKI, and more. If you prefer to work programmatically, the full Reg-RWS API and IRR RESTful API are also available in OT&E, with the same payloads and methods as production.

What Can You Test in OT&E?

The short answer is “almost everything.” Here’s a full picture:

Who Is OT&E For?

OT&E is useful for a wider range of people than most users expect. It is not just for developers building API integrations. Consider all these applications:

Network Engineers and ISP Staff

If your organization manages IP address space and ASNs, OT&E lets you practice workflows before executing them in production. Submitting a reallocation, modifying a network record, updating POC information, testing a reassignment — all of these can be rehearsed in OT&E first. When something goes wrong in practice, it goes wrong safely.

Developers Building Automations

Reg-RWS supports the full range of ARIN record management through a RESTful API, including XML payloads for Org, POC, NET, Customer, Ticket, Delegation, and IRR objects. OT&E gives developers a real target environment to build and validate against — with production-like data — before any of those calls touch live records. The same API keys you use in production work in OT&E, so there’s no extra setup beyond pointing your calls at reg.ote.arin.net.

Organizations New to ARIN Services

If your organization has recently become an ARIN customer, or if your team has new staff taking over resource management responsibilities, OT&E is an ideal place to get comfortable. You can explore ARIN Online’s interface, practice submitting requests, and understand how the ticketing and registration workflow operates — all without any risk of creating unintended records or triggering billing.

Anyone Exploring RPKI

RPKI in production requires signing a Registration Services Agreement (RSA) with ARIN. In OT&E, that requirement does not apply. Organizations that have not yet signed an RSA can use OT&E to explore RPKI, create test Route Origin Authorizations (ROAs), and validate routing security configurations before committing to the production workflow.

How Does OT&E Work?

On or around the first Monday of each month, ARIN copies user account data — including API keys — from the production database into OT&E. This means:

• Your existing ARIN Online account works in OT&E with no additional registration.
• Your current API key carries over automatically.
• The data you see in OT&E reflects a recent snapshot of production, so it looks and behaves like the real thing.

Any changes you make in OT&E — new records, modifications, test ROAs, IRR objects — are wiped at the next monthly refresh. This is by design. OT&E is a clean-slate sandbox, reset monthly so that users always start from a consistent baseline.

A Few Things Worth Noting

Ask ARIN Is Not Monitored in OT&E

Because the OT&E environment is not actively monitored, tickets submitted through Ask ARIN in OT&E will not receive a response from ARIN staff. If you need staff to process something on your behalf in OT&E — such as approving a certificate request or resetting an RPKI configuration — you will need to submit tickets in both environments. The production ticket should reference the OT&E ticket number, use the topic “Other,” and include the subject “OT&E approval requested.”

Email Interactions Are Not Supported

Automated email workflows do not function in OT&E. If your testing involves processes that trigger email — such as POC confirmation or ticket notification — those emails will not be sent from the OT&E environment.

Data Resets Monthly

Plan your testing cycles around the monthly refresh, which occurs on the first Monday of each month. Any configuration or records you have built in OT&E will need to be recreated after the reset. For users testing Delegated RPKI specifically, this means re-exchanging the identity.xml in the OT&E public front-end and forcing a new issue request after each refresh.

Getting Started

Prerequisites are minimal:

• An ARIN Online account that was created before the first of the month (so it is included in the monthly copy)
• Authority over resources in ARIN Online — your account must be linked to a Point of Contact associated with an organization that holds resources
• An API key, if you plan to use Reg-RWS or the IRR RESTful API — the same key you use in production works in OT&E

To access OT&E, use the following hosts in place of their production counterparts:

Log in at www.ote.arin.net using your standard ARIN Online credentials. If you are working with the API, substitute the appropriate OT&E host in your calls and use your existing API key.

Watch the Walkthrough

New to OT&E? We have a step-by-step instructional video to help you get oriented. It walks through accessing the environment, navigating ARIN Online in OT&E, and understanding what to expect during your testing sessions:

Stay Informed: Join the Mailing List

ARIN recommends that all OT&E users subscribe to the ARIN Technical Discussions mailing list. It is the best place to receive outage notifications and updates and to connect with other technical users who are working with the same tools.

Full Documentation

Everything you need — host URLs, prerequisites, RPKI-specific setup steps, the OT&E Trust Anchor Locator (TAL), and more — is on the Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E) Environment webpage. For Reg-RWS payload references, including the full XML structure for Org, POC, NET, Customer, Ticket, IRR, and Delegation payloads, see the RESTful Payloads webpage.

If you work with ARIN’s systems in any capacity — whether through the web interface or programmatically — OT&E is worth checking out. It is free, it requires no special agreement, and it is available to any ARIN Online account holder with resources. The only thing it costs is the time it takes to give it a try.

Recent blogs categorized under: Tips

• Everything 8.3 & 8.4 Transfer Source and Recipient Organizations Need to Know
• Networking with Purpose: Reflections on Engineering the Internet's Future
• Smart API Key Management for Teams: Security Made Simple
• Unlock Your Potential: A Complete Guide to ARIN's Free Training Resources