ACSP Suggestion 2019.15: Method of Remote Participation
Suggestion
Author: Anonymous
Submitted On: 08 June 2019
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.
Timeframe: Not specified
Status: Closed Updated: 17 June 2019
Tracking Information
ARIN Comment
17 June 2019
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/participate/community/acsp/suggestions/2017/2017-7/
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.