ARIN 58 Public Policy and Members Meeting, Day 1 Transcript - Thursday, 22 October 2026

Opening and Announcements

Hollis Kara: All right. We’ve got just a moment before we get started, it occurred to me, when I had mad déjà vu – by the way, I’m Hollis Kara, for those who don’t know me – when I had mad déjà vu when I arrived here, I know that a lot of events have been held at a lot of properties, but this one has specific historic significance in RIR history. Does anybody here who wasn’t here know what that might be? Anybody got a guess? Any guesses? Any guesses? John, you were here. You don’t know?

John Curran: I’ve been here about 10 times.

Hollis Kara: Exactly, which one? 2011, does that give you context? We did the last /8 – The last /8 distribution to all the RIRs was held in this hotel in February of 2011. So, I don’t know if it was this room, but we can pretend it was. You are sitting in a place of history.

All right, are we ready to get going? Is it nine? I don’t know – Yep, we’re ready to get going. All right. Welcome to ARIN 58, thank you for bearing with my little segue there. I’d like to start by thanking our Board of Trustees. Board members, if you’re in the room – Dan, Nancy, Ron, Peter, Lee, Hank, Tina, Rob, and Chris – can you stand up? Stand on up – and John.

(Applause.)

And John. Always John. All right.

And our Board of Trustees does a ton of work to keep ARIN running. Please take time to talk to them, get to know them, learn a little bit about what they do. We couldn’t do all of this without them.

Same, very important to our meetings, our ARIN Advisory Council, do I have my Advisory Council in the room. Stand up, wave a hand, whatever you want to do, dance a little dance.

(Applause.)

All right, these folks are going to be all over the mic today when we get to our policy sessions, and they’ll be available to you during lunch and on the breaks to talk about any questions you have about ARIN policy.

And, of course, our Number Resource Organization Number Council representatives, I believe we have two of them here with us. Yes, we’ve got Kevin and Alyssa here on site.

(Applause.)

Amy, unfortunately, was unable to be here.

They’ll be happy to talk to you about the work they’re doing to benefit the community.

I think these numbers went up since we populated the slide, but for the sake of argument we’ll go with this. We’ve got 199 virtual attendees and 192 folks registered to be here in person. So thank you very much for being part of ARIN 58. Give yourself a round of applause.

(Applause.)

And I’d like to thank and welcome our Fellows. Ten of them are with us on site. The rest are joining online. Fellows, we’re glad to have you here. And these folks put in a lot of time before the meeting to make sure that they are prepared and oriented and ready to participate. So I’m looking forward to hearing from you when we get into the discussion part of the program.

And with that, many of you listened to a lot of what I’m going to say again now last week on the 13th – that was just last week, feels longer ago –and for those who did and chose to fill out the survey, we have, I believe, selected a winner for the orientation survey. Do we have a winner, Bev? Ashley?

Ashley Perks: We do. It’s okay. It’s Danny Armata.

Hollis Kara: Danny Armata, are you here?

All right, Danny, we’ll be reaching out by email to get you your gift card. Thank you very much for being here and taking part in the orientation.

For those of you who heard a lot of this – woah, suddenly that got loud – let’s talk about it. If you’re a virtual attendee, please remember if you’re in the Zoom, have you a couple of ways to participate. Chat is for chat, in fact, and we have a chat host there to help you along through the day. You may raise your hand or drop questions into Q&A during Open Mic and question-and-answer sessions so we can get you into the dialogue.

Do remember that virtual hosts are the only ones who can share links in the chat. So avoid the urge. Please state your name and affiliation when you start a comment or question. Helps us out a lot.

And note, you have an advantage. You’re there online. You can start getting your questions in queue before we open the microphones, so that we’re ready to read those in. So don’t hesitate to start typing while the presentations are in progress.

We have our virtual help desk open from 8:30 to 9:30 today if you need anything. Please pop over there. You can reach that from the website.

If Zoom disconnects, first step is to try to reconnect. Second step is to hop over to the livestream. The link is live on the homepage for ARIN 58. See what’s going on. We’ll be talking about it there for sure. If you can’t reach the livestream, keep an eye on your email. You will be hearing from us as soon as we have services restored. Hopefully we won’t need to do any of those things, but it’s good to know.

Now for folks here with us, please, please, please, you are welcome to join the Zoom to talk to folks in the chat over there and connect with our virtual participants, but make sure if you do choose to do that that you have disconnected the audio and turned your volume all the way down so that we don’t end up with any silly audio feedback loops.

For you guys as well, when we open the mic, please approach. We do want you to – we do want to hear from all of you. When we do ask for those comments and questions, please try to speak more slowly and clearly than I’ve been doing. I can feel Denise glaring at me from over here. And make sure you lead with your name and affiliation.

We do want to hear from everyone, so, please, if you have a follow-up comment or question, unless it’s while you’re still in sequence of dialogue with whoever is standing at the mic talking at that point in time – wow, getting old is hard on your brain – please do wait until the line’s drained before you reproach the microphone.

Wi-Fi is available. Hopefully everyone is on it. If you have any questions or issues, first step is to check with the Registration Desk and they can find you help.

We do have five lunch table topics today.

Four are hosted by our Advisory Council, Policy Engagement Working Group. One is on the TIPTOP policy. Our Policy Experience Report Working Group will be hosting a session, as will the Number Resource Policy Manual Working Group. And we’ll have another table specifically on Caribbean engagement, hosted by Bevil Wooding. Please look for those signs on the tables at lunch. If there’s a topic you’d like to discuss, feel free to sit down.

We will be having our social event off-site this evening at the Ball & Chain. We look forward to seeing you all there. Do remember to wear your badge. That’s what’s going to get you in and out the door.

We’ll have bus service at 6:30 and 6:45 and return buses start at 8:30. It’s a little bit far to walk so do that. If you are bringing a guest, please make sure you’ve paid your guest fee with registration before the end of the day. In the event of an emergency, please just follow the hotel’s announcements and exit the room and use the stairs. Don’t head for the elevators.

If you need medical assistance, this information is also all available on the website, the closest pharmacy, urgent care, and emergency room. Hopefully nobody needs that, but it’s good information to have available.

And, for navigating the meetings, please remember that we are recording and livestreaming.

Presentations are mostly all available online on the meetings materials page. If you want to open any of those, if you’re having trouble seeing the screen, either on your computer or here in the room, that can be helpful. And the live transcript is also available for those who need it. We have it up in the room as well.

Almost everything you need is right on the website. Just go into those drop-downs and poke around and you will be able to find pretty much anything you can think of.

Virtual access, you can get into our virtual event through the virtual event hub there.

Please, please, we do our best to use real words, but occasionally acronyms do sneak in. If this is new to you, our acronym guide is an excellent resource to have handy. You can also use it for bingo.

And today, once I’m done running through all this, we’ll have a few more welcomes, our Board of Trustees Report, an update from NANOG, and our Policy Implementation and Experience Report before we go to break, and then our Advisory Council On-Docket Report and first Policy Block of all Recommended Draft Policies before lunch.

After lunch we’ll come back and we will have all of the Draft Policies, followed by an election introduction by our Election Officer. Another break and then we’re going to close out the day with some discussion about the work of the NRO, the Number Resource Organization, Address Supporting Organization – so many acronyms, so many words – and the status of the RIR Governance Document. Then we’ll have an Open Microphone iandclosing.

So full agenda today. I hope folks are caffeinated, that they got their protein at breakfast.

You will have noticed as you entered the room, we have signs up about our Standards of Behavior. You will have selected a box on your registration acknowledging those. We just want to make this event comfortable and safe for everyone to participate. That really just means treating each other with civility and courtesy.

And to help us support that process, and to report any issues, we do have an ombuds who is on site – Wade, are you in the room? Over here. Wade, do you want to come up and introduce yourself? Come on, Wade.

(Applause.)

He can’t pretend that he didn’t know I was going to do that because he’s got paper. It’s a walk, a little bit of a hike. You made it. Happy to have you. Please.

Wade Hinton: Good morning. Thanks, Hollis. How is everybody doing? So, my name is Wade Hinton.

I’m so honored to be with you all again this morning and around for this particular meeting.

I’m an attorney and a consultant. I’m based in Chattanooga. Our firm really focuses on how do we make sure organizations are reaching their best potential, their highest potential. A part of that is making sure that their employees and those around have a space where they feel a sense of belonging, but also safe.

Right?

So, to Hollis’ point, we want to make sure that this conference, this meeting, is a place where you feel that sense of belonging, that you feel safe, that your voices can be heard. So we all want to make sure we can enjoy this meeting.

So now I will say, if you do have an issue where someone maybe aren’t following the Standards of Behavior, there is an opportunity or an option for you to reach out to us.

There’s a QR Code that you can scan where you can contact me. My mobile number is 423-481-9400. Or you can email me at ARIN@hintonandco.com. Again, that information is on the QR Code, but we want everybody, and I think not just us to enforce this, we want to you make sure you hold yourselves accountable to having an enjoyable experience for all. Take care, everybody.

(Applause.)

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Wade. All right. So with that we get to the audience participation portion. Everybody get ready to clap. We would like to thank our Network Sponsor, AT&T.

(Applause.)

Our Platinum Sponsor, AWS. (Applause.)

Our Silver Sponsors, Secure64 and FlashStart.

(Applause.)

Our Exhibitor Sponsor, IPv4.Global by Hilco Global. That’s two globals in one name. That shouldn’t be allowed.

And our espresso bar host, Verisign. (Applause.)

Yeah, that one gets the big round of applause.

(Applause.)

With that, I’d like to invite John Curran up to the stage to say a few words of welcome.

(Applause.)

Welcome from ARIN’s President and CEO

John Curran: Thank you, Hollis. Good morning. I’m John Curran, President and CEO of ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. I think if you are here, I think you know who we are. I’d like to welcome you to your meeting. This is your organization, and this is your meeting.

We do a number of very important things at this meeting. This is an October meeting for us. So amongst other things you’ll hear about us doing elections. That’s a very important thing where you elect the people to the Advisory Council and the Board that help shape the organization.

But at every meeting, we do policy, and that’s very important. We have a number of policies today that we’ll be going through.

This is not an exciting organization. This is not. I hate to say it.

I ran a number of ISPs throughout my career. The job of ARIN is to be a Regional Internet Registry. We are to help facilitate you being a success. A secure, robust Internet is what we’re trying to provide here.

Now, if you think about that, the job of getting IP addresses to you is relatively simple. You give us clear policy, John and the team administers that policy – John Sweeting and the Customer Experience team. They make sure the addresses are available when you request them. You get your address blocks and you make use of them. It’s not hard. It really is not hard.

But it has to be done the way you want it to be, not the way I want it to be, not the way Hollis wants it to be, not the way the Board of Trustees wants it to be. It has to be done the way you want it to be done with the policies that you set. That’s what we’re all about here today, about making sure that the policies by which you guys coordinate, the regional address space in this region is done the way you want.

So I tell people all the time, they’re, like, what do you do for a living? Oh, I run an association, a regional registry. And you can see their eyes glaze over. And you can make it exciting if you want. You really can.

We do something very, very important. I said we’re not exciting. We may not be exciting, but that doesn’t mean we’re not important. And you’re the ones who make that happen.

So I want to tell you, as much as you may say, you know, does it really matter if it’s a /22 or /24? How important is it in the world today?

That’s not what the important part of this is. The important part is you’re the one making policy. That’s what the important part here is.

So make good policy, talk to people, hear their concerns, hear what their issues are. Try to accommodate what makes sense. Try to explain what doesn’t. And make the policy that you want the numbers in this region to be administered according to.

The important part is, it’s you, not us, not anyone else. It’s you coming together to coordinate this important function.

And so people ask me about an ARIN meeting. And, like, you know, we don’t have a circus. We don’t have performers. We don’t have, you know, a row of 15 speakers coming up to talk about the latest developments in AI and the Internet. Nope, we don’t. We just administer policy.

And that may seem boring, and at times it can be boring. I’ve been in a boring or two policy conversation. But it is so important, and it’s important because it’s what you do. It’s what you do here at your meeting.

I welcome you to ARIN 58 in Miami. I want to you have two great days. If you need anything or have any issue, please come find me. Thank you.

(Applause.)

Hollis Kara: Thank you, John. And I’d like to welcome up our Board chair, Nancy Carter, to give her welcome remarks and her Board of Trustees Report.

(Applause.)

Welcome and Board of Trustees Report

Nancy Carter: Good morning. I’m going to try and make it exciting. Really, John, you didn’t sell it well.

(Laughter.)

So, welcome to Miami, Florida. We’re delighted to see so many of you here in person, and even more of you, apparently, who are joining us virtually.

Miami gets its name from the Myaamia, a Native American tribe that lived in the region during the 16th and 17th centuries. Myaamia meant big water. It’s very appropriate.

The city was founded by businesswoman Julia Tuttle, also known as the mother of Miami, who convinced railroad tycoon Henry Flagler to extend his railroad to the area in 1896. And this sparked the city’s modern growth.

Miami earned the name Magic City in the late 1890s because it seemed to grow and transform almost like magic overnight once the railroad arrived.

Something of interest to my Canadian colleagues and Fellows who are here, it’s only snowed once in Miami in meteorological history, and that happened in January 1977. Think about that when you’re thinking about places to live.

Miami is home to several notable firsts. In 1944, pharmacist Benjamin Green developed the first modern suntan lotion, later known as Coppertone, to protect soldiers from the sun. And the very first Burger King restaurant was opened in Miami in 1954.

Miami in October offers a wealth of experiences that highlight the city’s unique culture and natural beauty. From the stunning beaches to vibrant neighborhoods, there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

Whether you’re exploring local art, indulging in delicious food, attending the South Beach Seafood Festival – which is on this week, by the way – or relaxing in nature, your time in Miami will be unforgettable.

ARIN 58 also promises to be unforgettable. We have a report from the chair of the Advisory Council, as well as two policy blocks comprising nine policies. ARIN 58 features several substantive staff presentations. We’ll share a summary of the Customer Satisfaction Survey results, along with reports from NANOG and the ASO AC, Address Supporting Organization Address Council. Several trustees will also provide updates on ARIN’s finances, the upcoming elections, and a new IPv6 task force.

The next day and a half will be busy and fast paced. So let’s begin.

First up is the ARIN Board of Trustees Report, as Hollis noted. I’m going to introduce you to the ARIN Board of Trustees, tell you about some of our oversight activities, provide a Strategic Planning update, and then share with you some of the work that our Board committees are doing.

As you know, we have nine elected trustees and the president and CEO is our 10th trustee. On the top row, we have Dan Alexander; me, Nancy Carter; John Curran; Ron da Silva; and Peter Harrison. And on the bottom row you see Lee Howard, Hank Kilmer, Tina Morris, Rob Seastrom, and Chris Tacit.

These are your Board of Trustees who are entrusted with the governance and oversight of ARIN. They’re responsible for ARIN’s strategic direction and long-term sustainability. Please say hello to them when you see them over the next two days.

The ARIN Board of Trustees has made several important decisions to support the ongoing operations and financial stability of the organization.

The Board approved an increase in registry services fees for 2027, ensuring alignment with the balanced budget strategic priority. The Board also approved a strategic investment in ARIN’s registry infrastructure, which will be undertaken over the next 18 months.

Additionally, the Board approved the formation of an IPv6 task force, which supports another one of our strategic priorities.

In April, I reported that the Board of Trustees had officially endorsed the ARIN Strategic Plan for 2026 to 2028. This plan outlines ARIN’s direction and framework to the end of 2028, focusing on the achievement of key objectives and guiding ARIN’s ongoing development.

This work was supported by a special committee for Strategic Planning. We reviewed and stress-tested the Strategic Plan at our workshop in August and made some changes based on our experience over the past 12 months.

The plan still identifies four primary priorities. And we reduced the key actions that would be undertaken over the next few years to 19. These priorities provide a clear roadmap for ARIN’s activities and help ensure the organization remains responsive and effective in its mission.

In August, with the help of management, we aligned on the 10 most meaningful KPIs, or key performance indicators, and we will be monitoring those closely.

The next few slides will give you a glimpse into each of the four strategic priorities and the key actions associated with each. I’ll go through these quite quickly. You don’t need to memorize all these.

Strategic priority one, global leadership. This strategic priority and its associated key actions are all about strengthening relationships and ARIN’s position and influence in the international community.

Strategic priority two, governance and organizational resilience. This strategic priority and its key actions are about enhancing ARIN’s governance structures and ensuring the organization’s ability to adapt and thrive.

Strategic priority three, member experience and advocacy. This strategic priority and its associated key actions are about optimizing services and strengthening community engagement.

And, finally, strategic priority four, operational and technical excellence. This strategic priority and its key actions are about maintaining high standards in ARIN’s operations and technical capabilities. Financial and technical sustainability are the drivers here.

The Board has several standing committees, each with a work plan aligned to ARIN’s strategic priorities.

The Finance Committee is currently chaired by Hank Kilmer, who serves as the ARIN Treasurer.

Under his leadership, the committee oversees financial matters and ensures fiscal responsibility within the organization, supporting strategic priority 4.1. Stay tuned for the upcoming financial presentation, which will provide further insights into ARIN’s financial position and plans.

The Nomination Committee is currently chaired by Peter Harrison. Under his leadership, the committee recruited nominees for the 2026 election cycle. The committee also identified process improvements that they will recommend to the Board of Trustees.

The Risk and – whoops, sorry – Risk & Cybersecurity Committee is currently chaired by Ron da Silva. Under his leadership, the committee is responsible for supporting a few strategic priorities, as can you see from this chart.

The Risk & Cybersecurity Committee provides comprehensive oversight of enterprise risk and cybersecurity practices throughout the organization. Through its vigilant approach, the committee ensures that all aspects of risk management and cybersecurity are addressed, promoting a secure and resilient operational environment.

Responsibility for managing compliance, maintaining certifications, and overseeing the risk registry falls to the CEO and the executive team. This structure ensures clear accountability for these critical functions, with leadership directly involved in upholding organizational standards and regulatory obligations.

Risks are systematically prioritized based on their potential impact and the likelihood of occurrence. This methodical approach allows ARIN to allocate resources efficiently and develop effective mitigation strategies, addressing the most significant risks in a timely manner.

Just yesterday, the committee ensured that management facilitated a deep dive into the Risk Register at our board meeting, ensuring that the entire Board is engaged in risk-management review and oversight.

Regular assessments are conducted and reported on by the committee to ensure that the Board remains fully informed and up to date on all aspects of the overall risk-management program.

In 2026, Chris Tacit stepped into the role of Governance Committee chair. The committee’s work focuses on two main areas, helping the Board work effectively and supporting the Board’s ongoing development.

Under Chris’ leadership, the committee has moved several important pieces of work forward, all connected to our strategic priorities. For example, at our Strategic Planning workshop in August, the committee planned and led two sessions in support of strategic priorities 2.4 and 2.5.

The committee also put a new Board leadership succession planning process in place. And to support trustees as they continued to grow in their roles, it updated the Board’s professional development plan and assembled a comprehensive set of relevant training exercises and resources.

Finally, the committee reviewed the officer position descriptions and set up an evergreen process to review and keep Board policies current.

Each year, the Compensation Committee, led by the Board chair, reviews and approves the annual performance objectives set for the president and CEO. These objectives are carefully aligned with the organization’s strategic priorities, as well as the key actions for which the president and CEO is responsible.

This alignment ensures that the president and CEO’s goals directly support the broader mission and strategic direction of the organization.

In addition to the performance objectives related to strategic priorities and key actions, the committee also considers essential leadership competencies. These competencies form an integral part of the performance evaluation, ensuring that leadership qualities are reflected in the president and CEO’s overall assessment.

The entire Board of Trustees evaluates the president and CEO’s performance against the established objectives. This review process, which is undertaken twice a year, provides a structured approach to assessing achievements and progress, providing feedback and maintaining accountability for the president and CEO’s contributions.

I’d like to close by saying that the Board of Trustees doesn’t just exist because the law says we must. We exist to be ARIN’s conscience and its compass. Our goal is to direct and protect so that leadership can focus on doing.

So, remember, we are your representatives.

Our oversight is strongest when we hear your perspectives. And we’re happy to chat at your convenience. Thank you.

(Applause.)

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Nancy. Does anybody – if there are any questions for Nancy, please feel free to approach the microphones or start typing. I’m looking to see if we have anything online. But in the room? Anything? Nothing?

All right. Nancy, you were fully comprehensive as usual. Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

(Applause.)

Hollis Kara: All right. With that, we’ll move to our next presentation. And, Jonathan Black, if you are in the room, we’d like to invite you to come up and tell us about what’s going on at NANOG. I know you just finished a meeting, but… (Applause.)

NANOG Update

Jonathan Black: It’s good to be here and good to still be awake after a good few days with NANOG. We had 827 people in person at our meeting. If you follow our numbers really closely, yeah, that was a good event. It was our third highest event since COVID. So that was really nice – only by a few people, but we count them all anyway.

We’ll cover a few things today quickly. We’ll talk about our governance. We’ll talk about some changes with NANOG content and how it’s available for everyone and as well as a short community update.

We have a fantastic board of directors. A couple of them are here. I think Adair is here. I saw Steve Feldman as well. They, like your Board, spend a lot of time, a lot of focused time, working on the future of the organization and making sure that we’re in line.

I’ve worked with a number of boards of directors, and this is among the best, most committed and dedicated that I’ve worked with. So thank you to them.

We have a staff team, a small staff team, and this is now out of date. As of a week ago, we hired a sponsorships and business development person. But when Hollis was on me to get my slides in, he hadn’t signed his paperwork, so we didn’t put him out. Evan is here with us today. It wasn’t enough of a firehose for him to drink at, just being at NANOG for the week, so we had him stay here for ARIN and get a sense of how ARIN and NANOG work together.

Content, we’ve spent a fair bit of time this year working on making our content more accessible.

This is a pretty simple slide. But if you go to our homepage, you can type in any topic you might want –oh, let’s say maybe RPKI – and all the talks that are in our database, pretty much everyone that’s been given at NANOG, if they’ve been tagged as RPKI, it will come up in a list.

If you’re otherwise minded, you can also dig down by keyword or tag and look at content tagged by keyword.

Every talk has a detail page. It gives you the profile of the speaker. It gives you details about the event, where it was presented, as well, the tags that have been assigned to it and any related presentations. Short abstract as well. Also from that page, you can have content to the actual PDF of the presentation and a video if we have it.

So a lot of information – oh, yes, of course, and a pitch to come to the next NANOG event. You can’t blame us for not having a call to action on a page like that.

All that content is available. It goes way, way back into early NANOG days. And encourage you to access that if you are looking for information.

Over the past year, we’ve brought back – we’ve brought a focus to hands-on learning at NANOG events. We’ve brought in workshops. In fact, I think we had a good one from ARIN yesterday. Brad, how many were in your session on the deep dive?

Brad Gorman: (Off microphone).

Jonathan Black: Yup, so 42 people in the room. That is one of the ways we work together with you, but it’s a fantastic resource for our people who come to our event. Education is core to what we do and who we are.

So thank you to ARIN for working with us on that, but as well there are other workshops we’re having at each of our events.

NANOG, we want people to connect, collaborate, we want to educate them. People ask me, was this a good NANOG meeting? I say, well, as the executive director, I measure things a little differently. I look at the number of people who attended. I look at how much revenue we generated from attendance. I look at the amount of revenue we generated from sponsorships. And I look at how well-attended workshops and BoFs were – birds of a feather session.

In a large group, you know, 800-and-some people, if we can get people meeting face to face, talking, interacting, talking about things they care about, to me that’s success. So a BoF is something that we look at, the attendance, the number of them.

You may be familiar with them, but they are not presentation events. They are people with like minds and interests talking about their passions and interests. And it’s fascinating the kinds of things that came out.

We had an IXP BoF at the last event. I sat in it. And one guy puts his hand up and he says, I’m trying to start an IXP in, I think it was Albuquerque. And he said, I’ve got everything together, I’ve got the space. I’ve got some peers. But I can’t get insurance, and they won’t let me start operating.

One guy puts up his hand and says, I have a broker. He knows exactly what you need. I’ll get you the name. Another guy says, have you thought about the same broker for your local telephone cooperative? Because they probably understand it.

So in the meeting, he gets three or four suggestions, off he goes. I haven’t followed up to see if he’s launched. But that’s what we need to be doing, is getting people connected and improving the Internet we all need.

Quick community update. We have future events coming. Three of them next year. NANOG 100 is coming. We are definitely looking forward to that. It’s going to be a big event. We have some speakers we’ve reached out to. We don’t have confirmations yet. But we hope we’ve got some really exciting content there.

We’re also hoping Boston in February will be a big event. Boston in February, hey, I’m from Canada, so I’m looking forward to the warm weather in Boston.

(Laughter.)

But I think we’ve already checked, and I don’t think the Bruins or Celtics are playing at that time, but maybe the day before, the day after. So if you’re looking for a good reason to be there – or maybe they’re playing your team, if you’re not a Boston fan. So we have those big events coming.

We’re being a little – to be honest, we’re a little bit concerned about NANOG 100. We’re looking forward to it, but we’re a little afraid the budgets will all go to NANOG 101. That people say, I’ve only got one event to attend, that’s the one I’m going to. Or sponsors may say, oh, I’m going to save all my money for NANOG 100. We’re looking at a few things to spread that out for sure.

But we hope you can join us for one or more of those events. Certainly you’re welcome at all of those.

Watch for news. It is in June 2027. And one of the things we’re hoping for is that we’ll be able to celebrate, have some fun with looking back at the legacy of NANOG. But we don’t want a newcomer to NANOG think, oh, this is a club I’m not a part of, I don’t get all these inside jokes. We want them to actually experience a NANOG as it would be normally. So it’s a bit of a mix there.

We have plenty of ways for you to be connected to NANOG. We have our world famous technical mail list. It is fun to see some of you active on that list. It’s for very technical information being shared, requests for contacts and peerswhen such and such an ISP or transit provider isn’t getting back to someone, they’re on that list looking for advice and names.

We also have an announcement list to keep up with general news. And we also have a members list and a couple of others. So you can keep in touch with us that way.

We have a number of committees, and the list is on the board there. These committees are incredibly important to us. NANOG is for engineers by engineers. I don’t want to be running all these committees. That’s a lot of work, first of all, but secondly we want NANOG and the content – is that my time? No, I still have time left. I have lots of time.

We want NANOG to be run by engineers for engineers. So as our members take part in the committees, it really does reflect the content and the environment that they want.

In January, we’ll be looking for new volunteers. We have about 70 volunteers who participate. If you’re interested, give me a call or talk to someone on one of those committees. And feel free to put your name forward.

That is it. Really quick update. Thank you for your time.

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Jonathan. Does anybody have any questions for Jonathan? Please feel free to approach the mic.

Jonathan Black: I’m getting a sign from the crowd. We do have elections going on for our board of directors. If you’re a member of NANOG, please vote. You’ll recognize some of the names on the list. But yeah, please vote – participate in that process for our board of directors. There are two seats being filled.

Hollis Kara: All right, seeing no further questions, thank you so much, Jonathan.

(Applause.)

Rolling merrily along. Look at that. Now, everybody get ready. This is a presentation where we really do want to hear from you. This is our Policy Implementation and Experience Report. And John Sweeting, our Chief Experience Officer, is on his way up here to ask you a bunch of questions.

Policy Implementation and Experience Report

John Sweeting: Okay. Good morning, everyone. I’m John Sweeting. Can you hear me?

All right, good morning, I’m John Sweeting. I’m the Chief Experience Officer at ARIN. I’ve been there for, believe it or not, 10 years this past August. I promised them five. I’ve stayed 10. They’re not kicking me out yet. So maybe I’ll do another 10.

All right. Welcome to ARIN 58 in Miami. You’ve already got all the background on how often we’ve been here. You know what’s going on with the city of Miami and where it came from, so I’m not going to spend any time on that, even though I know Hollis wants me to spend some time on my presentation.

Hollis Kara: Talk slow.

John Sweeting: So I’m going to talk slow.

So, when I was reviewing my presentation a few minutes ago, I realized we had a very important slide missing, and that’s the slide that, first slide that should be saying, hey, what’s the purpose of this policy review that I’m going to share with the community. So, I’m just going to wing that one.

And the purpose is that RSD, our Registration Services Department, they get a lot of input from customers as they’re doing all these tickets, and it’s a lot of the time it’s about policy. Why does the policy say this? Why does the policy say that? Why can’t we do this?

So, we capture some of the thoughts of the community. And the best way to share that with the rest of the community is here at our meetings. So that’s one of the purposes.

The second purpose is to report on policies that have been implemented and how they’re doing and what the effect has been on the community on ARIN and on our customers.

So, policies that I’m going to review today are 4.1.8: NRPM, Number Resource Policy Manual. She got me. 4.1.8: The ARIN Waitlist, Fulfillment With Multiple Blocks. I’ll explain that when I get to the slide.

The Number Resource Policy Manual 8.3 and 8.4: Recipient 12-Month Wait to Be a Source. And also, then I’m going to share how the implementation of ARIN 2025-2: Clarify Registration Services Agreement has been working for ARIN and our customers since implemented.

So, on the ARIN Waitlist, the fulfillment and multiple blocks. So, the topic here is organizations can qualify for anywhere from a /24 to a /22 from the waiting list. The waiting list is the only tool that ARIN has today to actually give direct allocations of IPv4, other than our two special pools: 4.4 and 4.10, 4.10. Usually, 4.10 is one of the topics I talk about here, but I’m not going to today.

So, we get a lot of organizations that qualify for a /22 or, as we all know, that’s four /24s make up a /22. And they wonder why, if we run out of /22s to give out to the Wait List, they can’t get four /24s. Well, the policy says they can’t. It says we can’t give four /24s to fulfill a /22 request.

So, I’ve got into some discussions with members of the community. And the reality of it is that those /24s are going to be allocated as /24s, whether they’re allocated to one customer who has qualified and has shown the need for four /24s as a /22, or if we give them out to four different organizations that qualified for the Wait List later than this organization as /24s.

So, the question I get is, why does that make sense? So, I’m turning that question back to the community and to the Advisory Council to work on it and figure out, why does that make sense? I come in to ARIN to get on the Wait List, I qualify, I show you where I need four /24s because of the growth of my company and the customers I’m bringing on board. And you tell me, we can’t give you four /24s because we can only give you a /22. We don’t have any more of those left to give to the Wait List. So, the people that came in after you, we’re going to give those /23s and 24s we have left to them and you’re going to sit on the Wait List for another six months or whatever, however long it takes.

So, I felt that was a pretty good argument from them. So, I felt I should bring that here and share it with the community and see what the community thoughts are on that. And the Advisory Council, of course, they’ll be looking at this and discussing it as well.

Okay. I probably have talked through all my slides. 4.1.6 is one of the reasons we do it. So, aggregation, order, preserve aggregation, we attempt to issue blocks of addresses that are the appropriate CIDR size.

I think I’d do a better job when I talk without my slides, but I’ll leave that up to you guys to decide. But these are things that would have to changed in policy in order for us to be able to give four /24s to somebody who has qualified for four /24s but they’ve only qualified for them as a /22.

The other thing is, if they say they will accept – they qualify for a /22 but will accept a /24, we’ll give them a /24. They come off the Wait List. They have to get back on the Wait List to qualify again for either another /22 or a /24. So, it really just drags out the process.

And they could end up coming back four times, qualifying for a /22 in the first place, but coming back four different times and ending up with four /24s anyway. So, there’s all that to think about, and I really am eager to hear discussion here on that.

This is just more of what I’ve already said.

So here you go. Questions for the community. Is this multiblock restriction still necessary? Is it still necessary for aggregation to affect fulfillment of IPv4 blocks to the Wait List? And is it still necessary to issue blocks greater than a /24 in size even though it results in serving fewer organizations with available space?

So, do we want to take these questions now?

Hollis Kara: Let’s do it. Anybody got feedback on this one? That’s why we structured it this way, so you don’t have to remember everything all the way to the end. Alright - Our first player.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I’m going to lose my voice early today, everybody.

The Wait List is only fair if you get what you want. Otherwise, the Wait List is an unfair way of getting space. I think that is what we are consistently seeing now is it’s only fair when you get what you want.

But it really needs to be what it was about, which was a slow landing or a soft landing for people who needed just a little bit of space. And unfortunately, I think that that message is getting missed with people feeling that it’s not fair that they’re not getting what they want.

So, to everybody with the policy, because I know there’s a lot of policies related to this, that really needs to be at the back of our minds the entire time.

But, John, I did come up here to ask you a question. Back when we ran out of space, there was an emergency policy to rescind one of the policies, which was return and renumber. I don’t know if you remember that back then.

John Sweeting: Mm-hmm.

Kevin Blumberg: Pulling levers has problems. So, when you talk about aggregation and making changes to aggregation as an example, there are levers that get pulled that can have very difficult impacts on people.

If you could just explain why or if somebody could explain why return and renumber was suddenly revoked in an emergency when we ran out of space, I think that might help sort of guide some of the history as important discussions.

John Sweeting: Could you repeat that question?

Kevin Blumberg: Return and renumber, which was a policy that allowed people to return and renumber aggregates, was stopped as an emergency policy of the Board back in the day because it was being abused.

So, what I’m trying to point out is when you are talking about aggregation, and I’m going to be nice, I’m going to give this, I’m going to do that. There are also ways of playing games with these types of things. And I just wanted the community to sort of understand, here’s an example of a policy from a decade ago that’s related to, that was pulled and the reasons at the time that were given for why it was pulled. That would be, I think, helpful for the community to know.

John Sweeting: Okay. I can’t give the reason other than you mentioned abuse. I would imagine a lot of it was they got numbers. They got replacement aggregates so they could renumber and return and they never returned.

John Curran: Right. John Curran, CEO. So, we had a period of time when you had the ability to get a new block, renumber into it, return the old block, and you got a larger block than you had.

And the idea was, well, I have to renumber, I’m trying to get to an aggregate. But in truth, it also was a convenient way to get space larger than you presently had and just repeat the process and wash over and over again.

And the Board has the ability to suspend policy when we think that there’s an abuse activity going on, the policy is not serving the community.

We don’t control the final word here. We suspend it and it goes to you to consider what happens. And so, the Board did suspend it in that case and say, this whole policy about renumbering no longer makes sense.

I guess to bring back, Kevin, I think the point you’re trying to make is policies do have impacts. When you’re thinking about what happens with these policies, you have to consider the fact that there’s the potential for abuse of them. And also at the same time, when you change policy, it impacts people who are relying on it.

We’ve had cases where we changed the Wait List policy and we didn’t fully consider everyone who was on the Wait List, and we had to go back and redo and handle the grandfathering – I hate that term – the handling of incumbents already on the list, to make sure that they were appropriately handled.

I guess the most important point here is as you’re thinking about these policies, recognize there’s a potential for abuse and you always have to take that into consideration. But also, these policies will affect you and real-world operators, if not you, others in your community, so use some care.

Capricious changes can have capricious effects and affect real-world lives.

John Sweeting: Thank you, John. Doug.

Doug Camin: Doug Camin, Cortland County, New York. Actually, I think my question was – it might have more or less been answered, so I’ll just make it as a statement – I think that there’s some consideration here related to abuse if the blocks get smaller. I know in the past, different presentations, you have mentioned or talked about how do we address abuse on the Wait List for people acquiring blocks for other purposes and stuff like that. And being able to obtain four discrete /24s might create an avenue for that to happen. So, I think I’m probably aligning with what Kevin mentioned, and Mr. Curran also just mentioned as well. So, I would reiterate that that’s a consideration to take into account here with this.

John Sweeting: Just to that point, Doug, I don’t think we at ARIN, and especially me as running the Registration Services Department, I don’t think we want to make policies that are going to hurt the community just because we’re trying to say, oh, there might be fraud committed here. That’s our job to find that fraud and to stop that fraud. We do a very good job of that. We have a team dedicated to that. So, I wouldn’t put that high on the consideration list of changing the policy.

I believe it’s there because in the past we wanted to keep the routing table smaller, we wanted aggregation, all this stuff, which ends up, you give an ISP a /22, and they give it to their customers as /24s anyway. They multihome and it ends up in the routing table anyway.

It’s harder for me – right now, the only thing I have to tell customers that ask that is, well, that’s the policy. And if it’s not a good policy, then it’s not. If it is, then, hey, I can say that’s a good policy and that’s what the community wants.

But I just wanted to bring that here because we’re hearing more and more, because we are filling some Wait List requests, quite a few, as a matter of fact.

Doug Camin: Right. I appreciate the clarification. Thank you.

John Sweeting: Thanks, Doug. Alyssa.

Alyssa Quinn: Alyssa Quinn, NRO/stay at home momma who moonlights as a consultant. So, I’m seeing here that you can qualify for up to a /22, but organizations will be able to elect a smaller block size than they qualify for down to a /24. And it sounds like you can – they can elect for the /24. They don’t have to hold out for the /22. And that’s how the policy was designed.

My question would be, if you are allowed a larger block than a /22 on the Wait List, and this was a question of aggregating – I’m sorry, not aggregating – but if this was a question of qualifying for a bunch of /22s up to another size, like, to what end? The Wait List is not there as an operational certainty. It’s there as, you know, a fallback and a maybe. So, you might qualify.

So, if you have a /24 available to you, then you can either take it or you don’t take it, would be my contribution here.

John Sweeting: So, on the reverse that, if they say they will take a /24, even though they have qualified and shown the needs for a /22, they will only get that /24, and they come off the Wait List. And they then have to wait for a whole new cycle to get back on and qualify for that /22 again. And they’ll probably end up with another /24 for that.

We really don’t have a lot of people, that if they qualify for a /22 it’s because they need a /22, and very few of them opt in to accept a /24. And I’m just presenting this from the community’s point of view. So that’s the discussion I have with our customers.

Is there anyone else? I see someone. I can’t tell who they are yet. Oh, it’s Leif.

Leif Sawyer: Hi John. Leif Sawyer, GCI Communications, Alaska. There’s kind of a weird logic chain that happens here, that if you’re on the waiting list for a /22 and you are unable to receive a /22 but are offered the /24 and you do not accept your /24, you have –

John Sweeting: You have to say you want – we don’t offer anybody a /24 unless they’ve already said –

Leif Sawyer: Right, this is the follow-on – do you still really need addresses? Should you still remain on the Wait List if you’re not accepting addresses offered to you? Just a question for the room.

John Sweeting: Yeah, and at that point, it’s a crapshoot for the customer because they need a /22. But if they say they’ll take a /24, that’s all they’re going to get. Then they’ve got to wait again.

So, you’re right, there’s a whole lot of weird logic that chains together there.

Adair.

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2.

Kind of following on Leif’s question, there are multiple other ways, perhaps less preferable for an organization to get a /22 if that’s what they’re determined to have.

I would – and I’m sure Kevin’s going to tell me I’m wrong – I would say that if they’re offered a /24, even though they really want a /22, a /24 is a pretty good allocation to get these days. And if they can turn it down and get back on the Wait List. But I’m heartless.

(Laughter.)

John Sweeting: I’m going to throw a few more tidbits out there on this. So, most of the space that gets returned because the bills haven’t been paid are /24s. We get a lot every month, /24s returned. We don’t get a lot of /22s or /23s.

The other thing is, we’re doing cleanup, a data accuracy program, that you’ll hear about tomorrow. And we have 12,000 /24s not under an agreement that are most likely going to be fed into the Wait List over the next few years.

So, think about that: 12,000 /24s, and we’re going to end up giving them out, most likely, to the Wait List over the next few years, as we continue our cleanup process, which you’ll all hear about tomorrow.

All right, Kevin.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire.

Just a comment to Adair, good discussion is never wrong. Whether the point is wrong or not, good discussion is never wrong. And no, you were not wrong. You were spot on. But that’s not the main thing for me.

And to all of this, it’s more like all is fair in love and Wait Lists.

(Laughter.)

John Sweeting: Louie.

Louie Lee: Louie Lee, Google Numbers Administrator. Just wanted to, just a very short story, I’m occasionally on a Wait List with my family at the airport, for my flight and for an upgrade.

When we get up to the counter, I tell them, we’re okay to split so that at least one of us can get an upgrade if there’s not three available at the same time.

So how about just a checkmark as you’re applying to be on the Wait List, if you would accept a smaller block? Just so that they would have already offered that as a possible option to be offered.

John Sweeting: We do that today. They can at the time say, I’ll accept a /23 or I’ll accept a /24. What if they say, I’ll take a /24 or a /23 but I stay on the Wait List until my /22’s fulfilled? That’s another wrinkle.

Louie Lee: That’s a second checkbox, I guess.

John Sweeting: That’s another wrinkle that could all be – if there’s a Policy Proposal put in, that all that could be talked about at that time as well. So, thanks.

Adair. Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2.

Since I am representing Internet2 at this meeting and our community has a bunch of legacy address space, and I’m interested and somewhat trepidatious to hear bit more about the /24 blocks that are going to be made available that are not currently under agreement and really am hoping that our legacy agreements are still in place for those.

John Sweeting: That will be a presentation tomorrow. I’ll tell you, I don’t think there’s many universities with /24s, though.

Alison Wood: Alison Wood, State of Oregon, Policy Experience Report Working Group. So, I would love to know, if you get on the Wait List – this isn’t really a question for John but for the community – if you’re on the Wait List, you’re asking for a /22, it’s your turn, and we’re only giving out /24s, can we just give out four consecutive /24s to that requester? I would love to know what you guys think.

Alyssa Quinn: Alyssa Quinn. I do like theidea of the other Policy Proposal where you can receive the /24s until you get up to that /22 size, especially in the scenario where you’re getting so many of those in the coming months. I think that’s the better alternative.

John Sweeting: Thank you. I don’t see anybody else running to the mic, so I’m going to go on to the next –

Hollis Kara: John, before you do, just don’t worry about the clock. We’ve got plenty of time before we need to go to break. And your lavaliere is on, so you are now longer chained to the podium.

John Sweeting: Oh, there you go.

Hollis Kara: You are free to wander.

John Sweeting: Now I can come over and get close enough that I can read it. All right. Maybe now I can read from the slides and not from my head.

All right. So, the next one, this is a pretty simple one, but it’s related to transfers, and it’s the recipient 12-month wait to become a source.

All right. On 8.3 and the Number Resource Policy Manual, Section 8.3 and 8.4, under the Recipient 12-Month Wait to Source, currently, the text states that “a source organization must not have received IPv4 addresses from ARIN for the 12 months prior to the approval of the transfer request.”

And that’s from the Wait List or from transfers, whatever. But it doesn’t state in this requirement, in the conditions, on the recipient of the transfer portion of the policy.

So, the problem is when somebody is looking into the Number Resource Policy Manual, looking to become a recipient and they can qualify for address space, they might just want to get it for a few months and then become a source. And they don’t realize that one of the requirements on them when they become a recipient is that they have to wait 12 months before they can actually become a source.

So. there’s other things – they may want to get a smaller block so that they can sell a bigger block, and they don’t know about some of the other policies we have, so they become a recipient to get that smaller block, they number out of their larger block and then they want to transfer that. But they can’t because they were a recipient within the last 12 months. What we’re wondering here and asking is and asking is, like, should that requirement that a recipient has to hold on cannot become a source for 12 months be under the recipient requirements in the Number Resource Policy Manual?

Very simple one, but we have a lot of confusion over that from people that are recipients that then come and try to be a source less than 12 months later. And we have to point that out to them, and they’re like, oh, I didn’t see that when I was becoming a recipient. If I had known that, I would have done things differently.

So, the questions on there, should the recipient sections include that language, and should – so the second question is should ARIN initiate Section 12 resource reviews for a recipient who seek to initiate a source transfer within 12 months, because maybe they are trying to do some nefarious things.

So, there you have it. No run to the mic?

Hollis Kara: All right, folks. Hop on up. We want to hear from you.

John Sweeting: Scott, you first.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. I just kind of want a little clarification. Say I am an ISP that has multiple /24s deployed in my network and I acquire a /20. Do my existing resources fall under that 12-month window once I receive…

(John nods confirming)

– okay – So I can’t move any of it.

John Sweeting: Absolutely. You cannot be a source and transfer anything for 12 months.

Scott Johnson: Okay. Thank you for the clarification.

John Sweeting: Kaitlyn.

Kaitlyn Pellak: Kaitlyn Pellak, currently wearing my Amazon hat, I suppose, here but I am also an Advisory Council member, just for transparency. So, I wanted to make sure I’m understanding the example you gave was somebody who received space with the intention of renumbering into that space and then eventually transferring the larger block that they have out to whomever they are interested in selling to? Is that the –

John Sweeting: That’s one of the scenarios that happened that we get asked about. They go, well, we transferred that larger block in or that smaller block in so that we could renumber into it and then sell off our larger block. That was the whole intent of getting into the transfer market, but then they’re stuck waiting for that 12-month period.

Kaitlyn Pellak: Understood. So, in that case, I do think there are valuable reasons why we might want to enable that particular subset of those transfer restrictions. Sorry, I need my coffee.

John Sweeting: And there is a policy that allows for someone to get a smaller block. So, today a lot of times I have to – I’ll waive that requirement because they could have qualified. But we’re looking for clarification so they know right up front of what their requirements are.

Kaitlyn Pellak: Understood. Thank you.

John Sweeting: It’s not changing anything. It’s just adding that requirement to the recipient section as well.

Kaitlyn Pellak: Got it. So, clarifying and codifying certain things?

John Sweeting: Yes. It doesn’t change anything. That requirement is still there. Today we only list it in the Number Resource Policy Manual under the source requirements and not under the recipient requirements, which recipients say they would like to know that when they read the recipient requirements.

Kaitlyn Pellak: Got it. Makes sense. Thank you.

John Sweeting: Kevin.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. This section was put in as an anti-fraud mechanism.

It was just part of the greater complete restructuring of the Section 8s. I’m not hearing that there’s actually a problem. What I’m hearing about is – two things – one, either people don’t read what the sections are; or staff don’t give them enough FAQs to help them, and they get bitten after the fact.

Ultimately, I think you just said it, John, they would have qualified under the get a small block beforehand, they didn’t know. If that’s the case, that’s just a process and procedure issue on the ARIN side, either through an FAQ or through a, yes, you’ve qualified under that, or you would have qualified under that. Have a nice day, the 12 months doesn’t apply.

I think you can solve this. I’m more concerned always about what I was talking about earlier, making changes and then having unintended consequences.

John Sweeting: So, there is no change.

Kevin Blumberg: Right.

John Sweeting: It’s just taking that requirement today. Does it show? No, it doesn’t show. It’s taking that requirement that’s on the source – if you want to be a source, you go and you read the requirements on the source, and it says you cannot have received any IPs from ARIN or transfers to be a source. But it doesn’t say that for the recipient. When they want to be a recipient, it doesn’t say, hey, we want you to know that as a recipient, you cannot be a source for 12 months after you receive it. So, it doesn’t change anything.

Kevin Blumberg: I understand. I’m saying that the NRPM is complicated. This is why you have so many people in the room. If it was a simple document, none of us would be in the room, we wouldn’t need to keep talking about policy. It is a hard document.

You’ve identified an area that is consistently coming up. How the Org helps people is just as important as how we work the document, is the only point I’m making.

John Sweeting: And I will tell you, people that bring that up, they find that other one, and it gets escalated to me. I will waive that requirement for them, under the policy that allows them to do it, but I don’t know how many people out there don’t escalate and they just sit there and don’t get accomplished what they want.

Kevin Blumberg: Or they wait 12 months.

John Sweeting: Or they wait 12 months, yes. Mike?

Mike Burns: Mike Burns, IPTrading. I was the one who added the 12-month wait into the NRPM, like, I don’t know, 13 years ago. And I did it against my will, really, at that time.

I would like to suggest a simple solution is just get rid of the 12-month wait. Then recipient sources don’t have to deal with it. It’s like anything else – you can buy it, you can sell it.

I will point out that APNIC does not have a resell wait. And it was really not for fraud. It was for flipping. People were concerned that people would be buying and selling addresses and flipping them like houses and that somehow they were all going to make money doing that, which really doesn’t make sense.

John Sweeting: I already know that didn’t happen.

Mike Burns: I do think that it would be kind of silly to start a Section 12 audit just for the request because of the confusion that people have.

John Sweeting: Perfect, thanks, Mike. Just so everyone realizes, what Mike suggested would take a whole new policy, because it would be a change.

Adam Augustine: Adam Augustine, representing myself, but I manage space for a few mid-size organizations including higher education and others.

I would love the clarification in the language. We ran into this issue with a couple of my organizations. But that having been said, the policy itself, I think, is sound.

John Sweeting: Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

Adair Thaxton: Ooh! Nice short microphone now.

Adair Thaxton, Internet2. Noting that we’re discussing the 12-month requirement, is there any – 8.3 also says that the source entity will not be allowed to apply for IPv4 space under Section 4.1.8 ARIN Waitlist for a period of 36 months following the transfer of IPv4 address resources to another party. That Wait List is also specified in 8.2.

If we are adding the 12-month restriction for the recipients, is there any thought about reassessing the 36-month Wait List requirement for the source?

John Sweeting: So, under what I’m discussing here, no, because we’re not looking to change the policy and get rid – that’s why I said what Mike brought up would actually require a policy change. That would be a whole new policy that you just asked about, yes. Scott.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. Given that there is no change to the actual policy and only a change suggested to the verbiage, which would clarify the situation for those seeking to acquire or dispose of addresses, I would support the policy, or support the motion.

John Sweeting: Thank you, Scott. Tina?

Tina Morris: Tina Morris, AWS. I think acknowledgment for the source that this delay exists is important. It probably would relieve some burden from staff when they get annoyed phone calls.

And sort of in response to Mike Burns, the community has decided we have a needs policy. If you get space, it’s because you need it. If we want to go to a no-needs policy, then that’s a whole different conversation. As long as we are still as a community want to have the need to operate a network, 12 months is a really low bar. By the time you deploy space, deploy your network and then decide you don’t need that space, it’s going to be a lot longer than 12 months.

John Sweeting: Agreed. Thank you. And, again, I’ll reiterate, what Mike was suggesting would be a whole policy change that we’re not really talking about here.

All right. So now I’m going to just take a few minutes to talk about the implementation of ARIN 2025-2, which was Clarify 8.5.1 Registration Services Agreement. Basically, it was implemented in March.

It removed “within the last two versions,” talking about the RSA having to be within the last two versions when someone, an organization, received more resources from ARIN.

That took a big toll on not just ARIN, but our customers. I don’t know how many of you have a problem – not a problem – but a long time lag to get an agreement signed with an outside party, going through your legal office and then finding an officer to sign it and everything else.

But we have a lot of companies that it takes months and months to get through their process within their company – some years – to get to where they can get someone to sign the agreement.

Once they’ve signed it and then we just want them to sign a new one, like they’ve got version 11 and we’ve changed a couple of times and we’re now at version 14 and they come in and get resources, and we say, you know, you’ve got to sign a new RSA, and they’ve got to go through that whole rigmarole.

Again, if they’re state governments or any government, if they have regulations against some of the things in the RSA, then we have to go through a full edit review with them and their legal offices.

So, it was a big burden to actually go back and keep asking people to sign a new RSA when we already had an RSA with them.

Our legal department reviewed that and said, yeah, once they’ve signed an RSA, it basically says they’re going to follow policies and any changes. So, yeah, they’re still under an agreement that didn’t really matter which version they were under.

We do always give the customer the option to sign the newer one because there are things that do change, and they might want to have the newer one so they know and their legal department can see what the changes actually were and what they’re obligated to now. So, we give them that, but most of them do not want to have to go through the rigmarole of signing a new agreement.

So, it was a simple, straightforward proposal. It reached community consensus, ratified by the Board, implemented by ARIN staff and the current staff experience.

So, since March, 72 organizations that were not required to sign a new RSA, for each of them, the signing of a new RSA was not required. So, no RSA to process, no officer or legal review on the customer side, no waiting on a signature, less effort for the customer, less work for ARIN’s staff, transfer processing time reduced significantly. And that small clarification made a real difference. So, we always like to point out when policy does good things, how those good things manifested into real life.

The previous six months to that, there was 386 unique organizations that performed these transfers; 45 were required to sign a new RSA under the old policy. First six months of implementation here, there were 490 performing them; 72 would have been required – in the last slide we had 72 – would have been required to sign a new SA under the old policy, but they didn’t need to under the new policy.

So, that’s it for that report. If there’s any questions, I’m still here. Still trying to get us back on schedule.

Kevin Blumberg: I’m going to be very quick. Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. John, what was the last RSA version that did not have an auto-op in it? Was it version 5, version 6? What decade was it from? How long has it been?

John Sweeting: Michael, are you in the room? Do you know? There’s Michael.

John Curran: Kevin, which specific provision that did not have what in it?

John Sweeting: Auto-op. Where they had to follow –

John Curran: That’s right.

John Sweeting: All changes.

John Sweeting: I think it was version 5?

John Curran: I don’t know – 5 or 6. Mike, do you know, offhand?

Kevin Blumberg: I may not have been at the mic back when you could not do this anymore.

John Sweeting: Oh, I’m sure you were. (Laughter.)

Kevin Blumberg: So, I think that’s the real issue because ultimately, correct me if I’m wrong, you are, as long as you’ve signed something newer than a document from 20 years ago, you are bound by the latest RSA irrespective, correct?

Michael Abejuela: Yeah, we need to look – I don’t know off the top of my head when that was in, but we can look at it.

Kevin Blumberg: So maybe that would solve the problem of the two versions, is actually go to where the problem started.

John Sweeting: Well, it’s already solved. That’s what I’m talking about. That policy was implemented and solved. We don’t do it anymore. Those were the results – a better experience for everybody, and better experience for everybody, ARIN and our customers. I think I’m done.

Hollis Kara: Hey, John, I have an online question for you.

John Sweeting: Oh. I thought I was done.

Hollis Kara: Ashley.

Ashley Perks: Sure, we’ve got one from Andrew Dul, 8 Continents Network. “Has ARIN legal determined that any RSA versions are not current or valid?”

John Sweeting: I’ll call Michael back to the mic.

Michael Abejuela: Michael Abejuela, Chief Legal Officer. Could you read that – what does it say again? ARIN legal determined – so we’ve not said that any version of the RSA is not valid. You’ve signed the RSA. We have an agreement with you. But you always have the opportunity to update your RSA on there, too. But we have not stated that, like, a version 2 is not valid because that would not be correct.

John Sweeting: Perfect. Thank you, Michael.

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. Noting that you’re specifically referring to Section 8.5: Specified Transfer Recipient Requirements, are you considering removing, within the last two versions, from any other sections within the Number Resource Policy Manual, or allowing ARIN flexibility in other situations as well?

John Sweeting: I’m not aware it’s in any other sections. You’ve seen it in another section, or you’re just asking?

Adair Thaxton: I’m just asking.

John Sweeting: I don’t believe it’s in any other sections, and we don’t require it for anything anymore.

If they’ve signed an agreement, they’ve signed an agreement, they’ve got an agreement. If they want to upgrade, like Michael said to the newest, then we allow them to sign the newest.

Adair Thaxton: I think it’s reasonable to allow you guys some flexibility and reduce overhead.

John Sweeting: Perfect. Thank you. Lee.

Lee Howard: Lee Howard, unaffiliated, although I should disclose I’m on the Board of Trustees. We have a minute. I thought this might be an opportune time to mention to anybody in the room or online who has not signed an RSA, because they think it is disadvantageous to them, that they might want to check out the most recent version. It’s been updated, and you may want to take another look and see if it’s okay.

John Sweeting: Great point, Lee.

Hollis Kara: All right. And then before I let you go – you think you keep thinking you’re going to escape, John, don’t run away. Michael, you might want your ears on.

Just clarifying, Andrew Dul asked that the policy says that ARIN would determine which versions are current. So just confirming there are no versions that are considered not current.

John Sweeting: I don’t know about “current,” but they’re all valid, for sure.

Michael Abejuela: Michael Abejuela again, ARIN Chief Legal Officer. I guess “current” in the context of the policy is meant to say that how we treat it, that whether we were going to ask for an update because perhaps you’re from an older version and we want to make sure that you’re to a more current version, it doesn’t mean that a previous RSA is not valid. So, there’s valid versus current. I think this is just defining that there was a desire to have people under current RSAs.

I will note that when we’ve updated the RSA, typically – now, this is up to everyone’s interpretation; it’s not legal advice for all of our customers – but that people have seen that there are positive or more favorable terms in the more current versions – the more recent versions, let’s say, more current than the ones in the past.

John Sweeting: And for most of the versions, if they’ve signed – they still get the benefits of those new changes; they just don’t have them in writing in their RSA that they can review?

Michael Abejuela: If they want to more solidify that understanding, it is better for them to be under, from my perspective. So that we’re very clear. It’s nice to be clear when it comes to contracts. But I’m a lawyer, so …

John Sweeting: Bill.

Bill Herrin: Bill Herrin, speaking for myself. I just want to ask that same question in a slightly different way. Are there any versions of the RSA that ARIN does not accept for new registrations?

John Sweeting: That we do not accept?

Bill Herrin: Someone who signed previously, you’re making a new allocation to them that you do not accept for the purpose of that new allocation.

Hollis Kara: I think –

John Sweeting: No, we’re not requiring – I mean, we’ll tell them, if they have, like, a version 1 or 2, we’ll say, hey, this is a really old version. There’s a lot of changes that have happened since then. We suggest you, but we wouldn’t force them to do that.

Bill Herrin: That’s what I’m asking.

John Sweeting: Usually they’ll want to. We haven’t seen too many people that don’t want to get the newer version, as long as it’s not a burden on them to get it signed. And I think – go ahead, Michael.

Michael Abejuela: Again, Michael Abejuela, ARIN Chief Legal Officer. I believe when we have a new request that we would ask them to go – I think the whole point of the policy is that if you were under a version 4 and you were to request new space, that we would have them update to a current RSA version, so that they would sign one when that new allocation or MSO comes in.

John Sweeting: No. That change took that away. They already have an RSA, or you’re saying if they didn’t have an RSA?

Michael Abejuela: If they don’t have an RSA, they definitely have to. But I’m just making sure on the implementation side.

John Sweeting: They’re offered the opportunity.

Michael Abejuela: They’re offered the opportunity to update the RSA.

John Sweeting: Yes. And they usually take it. We don’t have a lot of older versions of RSAs floating around because they have either had changes to their legal name, or if there’s any changes to the organization itself, then they do have to sign a new RSA. So, we always do that. We always update when there’s any –

Michael Abejuela: Because often there are changes and updates, because if they’re under an older version, there have been changes that would require an update.

John Sweeting: Yes.

Michael Sinatra: Michael Sinatra, ESnet. Are there changes – are there services that ARIN provides, like RPKI and stuff like that, that still require a version of the RSA? Like, let’s just pick on version 2, that requires something later than that, because that covers specifically RPKI.

John Sweeting: So, there’s an advantage to them – you’re getting into a little corner case. If certain versions of the RSA – I’m looking at where Michael is again – certain versions of the RSA don’t have a provision about the RPKI, and they do have to sign the RSP?

Michael Abejuela: RPKI Terms of Service.

Hollis Kara: RPKI Terms of Service.

John Sweeting: We’d rather sign the newer RSA that covers it. The analysts take care of that. They make sure that when they’re doing RPKI that they have signed a version that covers the RPKI, or they’ve signed whatever the other agreement is. I can never keep that straight.

Michael Sinatra: That might help answer Andrew’s question about the difference between current and valid and things like that.

John Sweeting: True, thank you. You’re good, John?

Hollis Kara: Anybody else want to help me hold John Sweeting hostage just a little bit longer?

(Laughter.)

No. We’re all done. Awesome. Thank you so much, John.

(Applause.)

Y’all understood the assignment. That’s the kind of participation I like seeing.

All right, with that, we’re going to be going to break. I’d like to ask that my Fellows and mentors come up to the stage so we can get a group photo. Otherwise, we’ll see everyone back here in at 11:00 for our On-Docket Report and then our first Policy Block.

So please go caffeinate, get ready and bring that energy back after the break, and we’ll see you at 11.

[Break]

Hollis Kara: We’re doing okay, we got a minute. Appreciate the offer. John’s got his coffee, so he’s good. Folks are wandering in. This is great. Everybody’s prompt. I talked it up, I got everyone excited? I hope it lives up to the hype.

Before we get started, I’d like to get a thank you for our live captioners, Dan and Denise, over in the corner, who have our live transcript up and running in the room.

(Applause.)

Thank you for that. Thank you, everybody, for coming back.

As John Curran mentioned earlier, this is your meeting, and this is your policy. So we’re going to kick it over to that.

But first, I’d like to invite Kat Hunter to come up and give the On-Docket Report.

(Applause.)

Advisory Council Report and On-Docket

Kat Hunter: All right. Hello, everyone. My name is Kat Hunter. I’m the chair for the Advisory Council, and this is the Advisory Council Update and On-Docket Report.

The Advisory Council, or AC, serves in an advisory capacity to the Board of Trustees on Internet Number Resource Policy and related matters. Adhering to the procedures in the Policy Development Process, or PDP, the AC forwards consensus-based policy proposals to the Board for ratification because this is the way.

The current AC consists of 15 members. This is your 2026 Advisory Council. Doug Camin is my chair. The Working Group chairs are also on there, but I will single them out when I get to the Working Groups.

All right. 2026 Advisory Council elections.

So typically, we serve three-year terms. Five seats are typically up for election each year. And AC members’ terms that end the 31st of December are Doug Camin, Liz Goodson, Kaitlyn Pellak, Leif Sawyer and Matthew Wilder.

You can find us at a number of events each year. And happy to announce that we were able to send AC members to the AFRINIC meeting this year, and we’ll be sending them to the one following our meeting.

We attend NANOG for insights from our network operators, and we attend other RIR meetings to follow their policy discussions within their meeting in an observatory capacity.

You can also find the AC members in a number of additional volunteering roles – the Advisory Council Working Groups, the Nomination Committee, Grant Selection Committee and as Fellowship mentors.

There we go. Advisory Council activity. So what have we accomplished and been up to since the last meeting? We’ve had four proposals come in since the last meeting, and I’ll go over these. These are all in draft at this point individually when we get to them.

Anything that has a star next to it was either written by an Advisory Council member or a Working Group. So you can see the difference between which policies come from the community and which ones come from us.

ARIN 58 Recommended Draft Policy discussions. So these are typically in the last state that they’re going to be in. This might be the last time you see these policies. They’re considered fair, impartial, technically sound and have a pretty high level of community support at this point.

The four Recommended Draft Policies: ARIN 2025-1: Clarify ISP & LIR Definitions and References to Address Ambiguity in the NRPM Text. I can’t wait until I don’t have to say that one anymore.

There was an attempt initially when this was written to change all of the language within the NRPM to ISP and LIR. We decided not to – the community decided they didn’t want to do that, so that all got switched over to ISP. We’re on the last iteration of that to switch all the spots where it says those two things all to just LIR. We think we got it this time.

Hopefully when this goes to show of hands, we’ve seen Public Policy Mailing Lists. This has been pretty positive. Hopefully we’re done with this one.

ARIN 2025-3: Change Section 9 Out-of-Region Use Minimum Criteria. This changes that requirement from a /22 to a /24.

ARIN 2025-7: Make Policy in 6.5.8.2 Match the Examples. Anything in Section 6 is IPv6 policy, and this is for specifically the end-user allocations.

ARIN 2025-8: Reserve 4.10 Space for In-Region Use. Sort of exactly how it sounds. This is codifying how ARIN already handles 4.10 space. But it’s going to make the language explicit rather than implicit.

ARIN 58 Draft Policy discussions, there are five. ARIN 2026-1: Taking IPs to Other Planets. This is being worked jointly with the IETF, and this is policy language for Extra-Terrestrial Networking.

ARIN 2026-2: NRPM Section 6.5 Revision. This is attempting to remove the complexity of IPv6 allocation mechanisms. The first survey actually went out – we’ve never actually done a survey on the Public Policy Mailing List before. And the Policy Engagement Working Group worked with the [ARIN] Communications team to make one for this.

It seems to be very successful. I’m going to let Matthew Wilder go over the results of that when he talks about his policy. But it’s pretty cool we were able to get that added to the mailing list.

ARIN 2026-3: NRPM Section 6.4.1 Retirement, sort of exactly how it sounds. It’s Section 6, IPv6 work, discussing property rights. That’s something that typically is just handled within the RSA.

ARIN 2026-4: Harmonize Section 1 and 6, Principles and Goal Statements. This is an attempt to reorganize and clean up these sections. There’s some overlapping texts that are in both, and it’s trying to just not have that happen anymore.

ARIN 2026-5: Define Out-of-Region Use. You would think that that would not be needed, but if you check PPML, we clearly need a definition for this, because it seems like we don’t necessarily agree on what that actually is. So this just adds a definition for what Out-of-Region Use actually is.

Policy statistics. I don’t know how we do it, but we manage to get the same number of policies in and out every year, whether it’s from the community or from our members on the Advisory Council. We always seem to get the same amount.

Advisory Council Working Groups. They do so much work for this community. Every month they meet to do different items. I’m going to go over all of them. But I cannot speak highly enough about the people in these groups. They spend so much time for the community trying to get this work ironed out for you all.

So the Number Resource Policy Manual Working Group, or the NRPM Working Group, the chair is Brian Jones. Lily Botsyoe and Kaitlyn Pellak are members. Doug Camin and Eddie Diego are both there in an advisory capacity.

This group sometimes evaluates sections of the NRPM to see if it needs any additional work. However, their core goal has sort of turned into our version of lunchtime table topics for AC members.

Sometimes you get a little bit of writer’s block when you’re working on policy and you need some ideas. But ultimately, it’s up to the shepherd to make the changes. So this is there as sort of a resource for our AC members to get new ideas.

Policy Experience Report Working Group. I love that John Sweeting does the Policy Experience Report before I say what this group is. So you’ve already seen that. This group will take the lead on coming up with potential policies based off of that report, send it out to PPML, listen to what you have to say at the microphone. And we end up sometimes having to create policy based off of whether the community wants to write it, or they go, no, you guys should totally write policy on that; I think you’ll do it better.

Alison Wood is the chair. Liz Goodson, Chris Woodfield and Gus Reese are all members of this group. Doug Camin and Eddie Diego are there in an advisory capacity.

And the Policy Engagement Working Group. So this got spun up last year based off of community feedback. Matthew Wilder is the chair. Alicia Trotman is a member. Doug Camin and Eddie Diego are on this group too in an advisory capacity. And Ashley Perks from the communications team, since we are frequently working with surveys and blogs and all sorts of social media stuff, has been nice enough to meet with this team every single month to try to come up with better ways to engage with the community.

There was a survey at the beginning of the year on things that were – items that the AC could accomplish right away. There’s a survey that’s out right now. Go find Matthew Wilder or myself. There’s a QR code to fill out the newest survey. They’re looking into additional ways to participate in the community on top of PPML.

But something that we all have to keep in mind is we need to make sure all of the policy stays within the PDP. So at some point all of that stuff will probably have to make it back into the PDP so that we include the entire community on all of the decisions.

There was a policy open house following the orientation this time around, which was super cool, because we were able to show the community how to submit policy and things that the AC actually expects when the policy comes in to us, so that the policy has a better chance making it right out the door, and there’s not a huge back and forth between the proposer and the AC right away.

And I think that’s it. That group has been so busy, been working on so much stuff.

All right. Working Group proposals. These tend to stay around the same amount every single year. The table topics were already discussed by Hollis, but I’m going to mention them again. Join a table topic at lunch. Improving the policy engagement experience and survey discussion. This is the Policy Engagement Working Group. Go find Matthew Wilder and Doug Camin.

TIPTOP, Taking IPs to Outer Space. Alison Wood and Gus Reese will be at a table.

Section 6, IPv6 allocations. This is the Policy Experience Report Working Group. Liz and Chris Woodfield will be at that table.

And I’m kind of interested to see where this last table goes. If the Wait List 4.1.8 didn’t exist, what would? That is Brian Jones and Kaitlyn Pellak.

All right. So before I go to questions and comments, first, I want to thank the staff, communications and the Board for supporting the AC the entire year. You put in a ton of work to help us do what we need to do and get everything done.

Eddie and Doug, Eddie is our Policy Analyst, Eddie Diego; Doug Camin is my vice chair. I definitely don’t do this alone. It’s a ton of work.

It’s really nice to have people to keep you on track, and it’s nice to go to Eddie for things that we need verification on. He’s kind of like our cheat sheet for the AC, which is always super nice.

Back in Barbados, I asked the community to be engaged, come to the microphone. You over-answered the call for that, which I am so happy about. It’s super nice to have policy shepherds come up and actually have people come to the microphone. There is nothing worse than presenting something and trying to get the community feedback and it’s crickets. And we can’t do anything without the community participation. So it is so important. If you have a question, somebody else probably also has a question in the room.

Okay, this last one is going to be hard for me because it’s – Leif, I know you went through this, and, Tina, I know you went through this too. It was decided at the beginning of this year that this was going to be my last year as Chair.

Many people here know that I am also a bit of a Star Wars fan, and I’m going to try to keep this last section – I’m going to keep it so it doesn’t go too far down the Sarlacc Pit without getting lost –although I hear that you absolutely can survive it. So to the members of the Advisory Council, it has been the honor of my career to stand in front of you as your armorer, I mean chair. Every policy we take in starts as a proposal and we forge community-driven policy through the fires of PPML and all of our meetings.

I asked you to follow the way, uplifting the community and each other. When I started as Chair, I asked you to follow the way. You followed through, and I could not be prouder of the group of people that I work with.

And with that, this is the way. I hope this continues to be the way. And I will be passing on my forging tongs to someone else at the end of the year. But I thoroughly trust whoever is going to take the reins on.

And with that, are there any comments or questions?

(Applause.)

Hollis Kara: Microphones are open if you would like to address the armorer.

Kat Hunter: I do have a cosplay for it too.

Hollis Kara: I know you do. I wish you would have brought it.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I’m going to keep the Star Wars to a minimum. I remember at the last ARIN meeting we got a little sidetracked by many of that, and I’m sure that there are others that will help along with that one.

I don’t think anybody in this room truly understands the amount of work that goes into being the Advisory Council Chair. And I want to thank you for that because you see the Advisory Council up here, you see the members of the Advisory Council, and they put in a lot of work.

And even Advisory Council members don’t quite understand the amount of work and dancing that they need to do as a Chair. It just ups the complexity that much more. And this is a volunteer position. So, Kat, you have done many years of it, and I truly appreciate it.

So my next question is not direct or anything related to that. It is purely, you mentioned that the IETF is working with – can you – I forget the exact term you used – but in relation to TIPTOP, what is the relation there? Because you used a more formal term than I think is the situation.

Kat Hunter: So there are members of the IETF that are working with members of the Advisory Council on getting input on how the policy is moving forward. So yes, clarification –

Kevin Blumberg: I just want to confirm it’s not the IETF organization –

Kat Hunter: Yes. Yes. It’s hard when I have to squish down what’s happening with all the policies.

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. I’m going to try to keep the Star Wars references to a dull raaah [Wookie noise] ! But it’s been – she said I could.

Kat Hunter: I told you you get one. (Laughter.)

Adair Thaxton: It’s been great having you as our AC Chair, and we look forward to having your continued participation on the AC in the future and/or in a different capacity. I know that being the Chair has been a lot of “Ewok” and that draft policies are built on hope. And just finish saying I love you.

Kat Hunter: (pause) I know. It took me a hot second. I got it.

(Laughter.)

Hollis Kara: Do you want to come over to Lily?

Lily Botsyoe: Lily Botsyoe, right now a tech policy analyst and AC. Just to say a big thank you to you. One of the things that I learned quickly from you, Kat, was the fact that we all could contribute in our own capacity to making the work as AC members flourish. And what you did to me was mentor. And for somebody who came in as a Fellow to the AC, I remember the idea I had was that after being a Fellow, that the onus lies on you to pretty much contribute. Contribution looks like many things. And you made it look like you don’t have to always wear the newcomer cap; you can learn and show up as you are.

Thank you for that. Thank you for mentoring. Thank you for encouraging participation. Thank you for building that pipeline from Fellowship to potential leadership and showing us how it can be. So thank you so much.

Kat Hunter: Thanks.

Leif Sawyer: Leif Sawyer, GCI Communications, prior Chair for the AC. Kat, thank you. You took the reins, you and went further – okay. I won’t. No, you really grew into this. You made this your own. And I’m super proud of you. And I hope that wherever you go, you live long and prosper.

Kat Hunter: That’s okay. I am one of those people that absolutely thinks Star Trek and Star Wars can get along. So it’s okay.

(Laughter.)

Matthew Wilder: Matthew Wilder, ARIN Advisory Council. I want to just echo something Kat has said first about staff support for the Policy Engagement Working Group. We’ve asked them to do some very unusual things the Advisory Council doesn’t normally do, and staff has been great. So thank you very much for that. And then, Kat, I want to say thank you very much for your leadership. You’re a thoughtful person, and I don’t think people realize how much time and effort you put in. So thank you very much for your work.

Kat Hunter: Thanks.

John Sweeting: Hello, John Sweeting, ARIN Chief Experience Officer, and a prior Chair of the AC. I want to say you did a great job, Kat. And we’re looking forward to a lot more from you.

There’s been a long line established from prior Chairs starting, I think the earliest Chair in the room now is Ron da Silva, who is now on our Board. And after Ron, I think it was me, who is now an employee. And then I think from me it went to Dan, who is on our Board. From Dan, it went to Leif.

Kat Hunter: Tina.

John Sweeting: Tina, who is now on our Board. And from Tina, it went to Leif, who is still on the AC, but, you know, we’re waiting. And then from Leif to you. So you’re by no means done. Just remember that. You’ve got a long road to go.

Kat Hunter: Yeah, it’s really interesting to run a meeting with all of the prior Chairs in the meeting on your first meeting. There’s no pressure there or anything.

John Sweeting: We do not judge you. We do not judge you.

Hollis Kara: All right.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, on behalf of the Jedi Council, just in your future endeavors, may the force be with you.

Hollis Kara: All right, thank you, Kat. (Applause.)

All right. Now we’re on to the first of our Recommended Draft Policies, 2025-1: ISP, LIR, all the things. Leif Sawyer, if you could please come up here. I’m not reading that whole title. You can’t make me do it.

(Laughter.)

Policy Block 1

Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2025-1: Clarify ISP and LIR Definitions and References to Address Ambiguity in NRPM Text 13 August 2026

Leif Sawyer: All right. Good morning. So this is Recommended Draft Policy 2025-1. We are clarifying the differences between – and aligning between ISP and LIR. Kat gave a great summary, so I don’t think I have to recap too much. But as you can see here, there are some issues here with trying to align it. We don’t explicitly define some things. There’s some implicit definitions, and we carried over LIR from the global policy in Section 6.

And in common parlance here, within the industry, ISPs are LIRs but not all LIRs are ISPs. So we are going through and adding some explicit definitions. And through the course of the multiple iterations, we are finally replacing ISP with LIR throughout.

So the Policy Statement here, there’s going to be a lot of pages. I’m not going to read any of them. Hopefully you have all gone online and gone through your Discussion Guides, because there’s a lot of red in here, where we are just changing LIR, or ISP to LIR.

So this is the new definition for ISP. And this also has gone through multiple iterations. And then every time we replace, you can see LIR, or Local Internet Registry, as appropriate.

We’re retiring this section here in 6.5.1. This is terminology that explained where the global policy came from.

Couple places where we’re just pulling out the term ISP, back here I guess, and not replacing it because it’s not required. It’s redundant information.

All right, Statement of Conformance. This has gone through the policy process. We provided the Statement of Conformance and published it to the PPML. It’s got a bit of history. So we have edited it multiple times based on feedback from PPML, based on policy member meetings. And a Staff and Legal Review was handled back in June, and there were a couple of issues that came up, and we addressed those within the policy as well.

No material issues, fortunately. We took these improvements from staff and ran with them.

There’s one that we provided to the Policy Improvement Working Group.

And our policy impact here is that there’s really no material impact to the community other than making things a little bit clearer. And there is a small downstream impact to the business operations of ARIN.

Community feedback has been very positive, moving to LIR. No more looking backwards at the term ISP. We have not seen any negative feedback going towards LIR.

So the simple question for this Recommended Draft Policy is, are you in favor of this as written?

Hollis Kara: And for conducting the discussion and polling, I’d like to invite our Board chair, Nancy Carter, up to the stage. If you have questions, comments, thoughts, feedback before we go to the poll, please feel free to approach the microphone or start typing.

Lee Howard: Lee Howard, I am currently unaffiliated, although I am on the Board of Trustees. This is not a Board statement or question. I have not discussed this with anyone else on the Board.

When I’m here, I’m often trying to think in terms of if I were a newcomer, if this were my first time at ARIN, what would be my experience be? What would I be encountering here? So my question for you is, could you define what an LIR is?

Leif Sawyer: Could I define what an LIR is?

Lee Howard: Because outside of the Regional Internet Registry context, right, ARIN, I’ve never heard the term before. So what does it mean?

Leif Sawyer: So we have the hierarchical terminology. Say Regional Internet Registry versus a local Internet registry. And, yes, so an LIR is somebody who has Internet number resources and provides them to their downstream customer base, right?

Lee Howard: I think that’s an excellent definition, thank you.

Leif Sawyer: It’s very simple. It can get a little bit more complex, but I don’t know that we need to right now.

Hollis Kara: If we want to go over to the other mic.

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. I’m glad that we’re adding a definition for ISP. But I was wondering, are there still going to be any remaining uses of the term ISP in the NRPM?

Leif Sawyer: I believe we got them all out except for the definitions, so that people can look back and see that ISP is basically subsumed by the term LIR. When they do a search for ISP within – I’m an ISP; where do I find myself? Oh, I now have to use the term LIR here. And that’s what I look for.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I fully support this policy. So please take that with a little grain of salt when I say the ISP definition we will be back at it again because it’s the definition of something that is going to continually change. That is unfortunately the problem with putting in definitions for technology because a sentient AI corporation will be the next thing that we have to add in in five years or whatever it is.

That’s unfortunate, but it’s just the way that things work.

I want to echo, though, what Lee said. As a community, our problem is we love to use acronyms. And globally, within the RIR space, it’s great that we are finally doing what other regional registries have done, which is sort of embrace LIR as their term. But that is what it is. It’s their term.

Nobody outside of this room or a RIPE or a LACNIC region really know what LIR is. And we do a really – we do a disservice to ourselves by creating terminology that is not understood, even when we define it. So that is more a down-the-road sort of thing. But ultimately, I fully support this because at least we’re fixing one problem, not creating two.

Leif Sawyer: Sure. And you actually bring up the whole justification behind this policy, which is the alignment with the global community, because we are no longer just US-centric.

Kevin Blumberg: You’re not ARIN-centric. (Laughter.)

Leif Sawyer: Right.

Hollis Kara: Stay at this mic.

Roman Tatarnikov: Roman Tatarnikov, IntLos. I already provided my comments on this policy if not on PPML, then on the previous meetings. I fully support it. I think ISP even is redundant to keep it in definitions. But now listening to Kevin and thinking about it, actually having a definition or maybe doing a blog post of what ISP is and what LIR is, it would be nice to provide some information outside of the community, because the way to think about it, ISP is like IPv4. It never is going to go away no matter how much we try. Thank you.

Leif Sawyer: Thank you. And I believe that part of the implementation guidelines will be getting a lot of information out to the community.

Adair Thaxton: Still Adair Thaxton, still Internet2. You said that we’re leaving the ISP definition in place so that we can provide a pointer to the term LIR. The LIR terminology does not appear in the proposed definition for ISP. The term ISP does appear in the proposed definition for LIR, however.

Leif Sawyer: Yes, exactly.

Adair Thaxton: So if we’re leaving it in place as a pointer to refer to LIR, we should have that called out explicitly.

Leif Sawyer: I’m sorry, I may have flipped my terminology. I meant that because LIR subsumes ISP, that’s where the reference comes from.

Hollis Kara: Go ahead.

Louie Lee: Louie Lee, Google, no longer Google Fiber, IP administrator, ex-chair of the ICANN Address Supporting Organization Address Council. And I’m sorry for not having introduced Louie’s hat earlier. Here it is.

I think for some people who are having to do mental gymnastics to figure out if they’re an ISP or an LIR, just think of an LIR as a function so that this is something you do. You could be an organization that runs AI. But if you happen to also assign the addresses, fall under the LIR function, then you could be considered an LIR in that case. Or if you happen to be an actual ISP and you have multiple businesses, you could still be an LIR.

Leif Sawyer: Thanks, Louie. That might be a great policy update to the definitions.

Louie Lee: Yes, I support whatever is being proposed also.

(Laughter.)

Hollis Kara: All right.

Brent McIntosh: Brent McIntosh, Trans Americas Fiber system. I just want to say that I do actually support this particular draft. And while it’s purely, in my mind, terminology cleanup, I want to find out, say, should this be accepted, what sort of timeframe ARIN would have to making the updates on the website or especially when it comes to things like the financial aspect.

If you fall into a particular bracket, I know normally we say ISP, but it’s just the education part of it, just to remove any ambiguities for the community out there. Do you want me to simplify that?

Leif Sawyer: Yes. But I think that’s more of an issue for staff.

Brent McIntosh: Right. I’m just generally saying I’m supportive because this draft is, to me, just a terminology change, and happy to see LIR as opposed to just being ISP or LIR.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

Adam Augustine: Adam Augustine, representing myself again. As somebody who probably qualifies as Lee’s newbie, I did a lot of work in the ’90s. And now I’m back to it for multiple organizations.

I do appreciate the clarification of the language and I support the policy change. Just a shout out to the ARIN Help Desk who walked me through very patiently a lot of my questions. They’ve been a remarkable resource. So thanks.

Nancy Carter: Go ahead.

Brian Morisette: Brian Morisette, Ziply Fiber. I fully support this as written. The policy – and this is a great example of how this community is able to come together on working through this stuff – this policy was originally introduced at my first ARIN. And it was very controversial, I would say, in how that was proposed.

It was taken back, reworked. I think the council and the authors behind the proposal have done a great job at meeting the community where that conversation went. So I applaud that effort, and I, again, fully support this as written.

Leif Sawyer: Thank you.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. I support policy as written.

Leif Sawyer: Thanks, Scott.

Nancy Carter: Do we have any questions from our virtual attendees?

Ashley Perks: No questions. I do believe we do have someone who is typing. But I think we can probably hold or skip.

Hollis Kara: Yes, we did have a Statement of Support. But the submitter has not identified their name or affiliation. So we can just note it for the record. I think we’re good to go to the poll.Do you want to call that or do you want me to call it, Nancy?

Nancy Carter: Oh, I want to do it.

Hollis Kara: You go. All you, lady.

Nancy Carter: So, we want to know, are you in favor of the policy as written? And please put your hand up, raise it very, very, very high, and leave it up for a long time until the blood flow stops, because that’s how long it will take to count all the votes in the room. Thank you.

Hollis Kara: The poll is also open for our virtual attendees. So go ahead and tick a box and hit submit, and we will get you counted as well. Don’t raise your hand online. We can’t see you.

Nancy Carter: We’re good? Thanks, Michael. I think you can put your hands down now. Thank you.

Hollis Kara: Do you want to call the opposed?

Nancy Carter: Yes.

Hollis Kara: We’ve got to do that too. We have two sides to this one, Nancy. I’ll take the second one if you want.

Nancy Carter: All right. Is anybody opposed to this policy as written? Please put your hand up, way, way up. Leave it up.

Hollis Kara: I’m going to give our tabulators just a moment to tabulate. It’s kind of a wide room, so they’ve got to walk a minute. Hang with us. You don’t want to miss anybody.

Leif Sawyer: Now I’m over time.

Hollis Kara: It’s okay. You’re good.

Leif Sawyer: I was trying to get you back on target.

Michael Abejuela: Michael Abejuela, ARIN Chief Legal Officer. For Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2025-1: Clarifying ISP and LIR Definitions and References to Address Ambiguity in NRPM Text, in the room, we had 115; remote, we had 69. Show of hands, had 86 for and 0 against.

Nancy Carter: Thanks very much, everybody.

Leif Sawyer: Thank you, all.

Hollis Kara: The AC will take that for consideration. Thank you, Leif.

(Applause.) Good job.

We’re going to go for the next one. We’ve got Recommended Draft Policy 2025-3: Change Section 9 Out Of Region Use Minimum Criteria. And for that, Gerry George, come on up.

(Applause.)

Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2025-3: Change Section 9 Out Of Region Use Minimum Criteria

Gerry George: Good morning to all. Good morning, all. Okay. So let’s get this working.

Okay. So we’re looking at this Recommended Draft Policy. Shepherd is myself along with Matt Wilder. And this policy has been around for just a little bit now. Let’s see how it’s going to go.

Okay, the Problem Statement – I’ll just do a very quick read, that Section 9 of the NRPM,Out-of-Region Use, requires organizations to use at least a /22 in the ARIN region before they can justify out-of-region use. And it was determined that this harms smaller organizations who have less than a /22 use in region but may require some additional out-of-region use.

Okay. So this proposes reducing the minimum in-region use that organizations would have to – the threshold that organizations would have to meet so that they can choose to expand their networks, expand their operations outside of the ARIN region.

The proposal also includes some language addressing the utilization when qualifying for the IPv4 resources, and there are three separate mechanisms under that. The IPv4 Waiting List, Section 4.1.8, the Micro-Allocation Pool, Section 4.4, and the dedicated IPv4 block to facilitate IPv6 deployment, Section 4.10.

So we take a look at the Policy Statement where the required changes are being suggested. And I’m not going to dwell on it too much because this policy has been around for a little bit.

So we’re showing what the changes would look like. And two main changes in there is the /24. At least a /24 used in region, and then the second block of text actually came in following ARIN 57, where there was some discussion, and also on PPML, where there should be some form of protection to maybe not allow a loophole for companies to get through this policy to essentially use ARIN’s limited resources outside of the ARIN space.

So this text was added in post-ARIN 57. And then we did our Standard of Conformance so that the policy would move to Recommended Draft. And Recommended Draft happened at our – not February, February is when the proposal came in – at our September meeting.

So the Statement of Conformance found that the policy was fair, impartial, and technically sound. It explains some of the other requirements that were needed.

The brief history, proposed February 2025. Became a Draft Policy on the 25th of March. The text was revised on the 20th of August, as I mentioned, following the ARIN 57 meeting.

And we did a Staff and Legal Review that came through on the 11th of September based on that text. Now, interestingly, after we made - up until that point, there was, tended to say overwhelming support for the policy.

Following the additional text, we then got into some additional discussions on PPML based on the subject of the text. Okay.

So the Staff and Legal Review, of course, and all this information is available online, so I’m not going to read it in full detail, but it found out it was relatively straightforward as far as the implementation of the proposal is concerned.

And it does not modify the thresholds, et cetera, et cetera. It can be implemented as written. Staff and Legal said yes, and no major issues to content with.

The policy impact that it lowers the minimum utilization threshold within the ARIN region so that organizations can qualify to deploy ARIN’s resources outside of the ARIN region. And I’m going to repeat that, and later on you’ll understand why.

The policy lowers the minimum utilization threshold within the ARIN region so that organizations can qualify for ARIN resources that they choose to deploy outside of the ARIN region. And out-of-region usage may not be used for that justification.

As I said, up until the revised text, there was quite a bit of support for this proposal. So following the adjustment, we then started getting some comments with regards to what was perceived as issues with the changes that were made.

So we had some persons saying that it didn’t quite meet the goal of the policy, or that the text didn’t quite match the Problem Statement. And I have more of the objections on here because the agreements – not necessarily that there is more of one versus the other – but the agreements were all generally up to the revision of the text. So I’m just focusing on some of the objections that were there so that we can have the discussion based on the community feedback.

Okay. And some more of the comments. And again, all of this is available on the PPML, of course.

So there is a just a little bit of the clarification that is needed because I think the way the text was – not so much written – the way the text was interpreted may have created some misconceptions as to what the policy – as to the actual impact of the policy.

Just for some clarification, the language of this policy is speaking only to the criteria to justify qualifying for Section 4.1.8, 4.4, and 4.10. The language does not add any restrictions as to how you can utilize that space. That’s why I did the repeating of it earlier coming out of the policy text.

So the actual impact of the policy change, those are some of the comments coming from the community, that there was a comment suggesting maybe even some change of the language to make the understanding a bit clearer, so in case there’s still any misunderstanding and so on.

So coming out of that, the question is, to the community, are you in favor of this policy as written?

Hollis Kara: All right. With that, I’d like to welcome Nancy back up to help with moderating the discussion and the poll. If you have comments or questions on this policy, please approach the microphone or start typing.

Nancy Carter: Kevin, go ahead.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I’m going to start this off because everybody seems so keen. This is a complicated one.

Do I support it? Yes, with the current text you’ve put in, this is a no-op policy. Why is it no-op? Because nobody’s going to get any space that they’re now trying to get because you don’t allow out-of-region. So this was a forum shopping proposal. If you had put it in without you can’t get wait list, you can’t get 4.10 and 4.4 space, then those spaces would have been drained for out-of-region use, which goes against the fundamentals of our Regional Internet Registry system.

So do I support it? Absolutely. But I support it only because I don’t think it’s ever going to now be used rather than it’s going to be used.

So a great example. I’m an Internet Exchange point in pick someplace in the ARIN region. I have a /24 from ARIN. I don’t qualify for more for out-of-region because I’ve only got a /24. I can now go and get space for the RIPE region or the APNIC region or the LACNIC region to form an IXP there.

Am I doing a good thing by doing that? I don’t have a nexus to Europe now because my space is in North America. I’m bypassing what may be policy in the RIPE region, which is a smaller amount that’s given out, not a /24. So I’m forum shopping. I’m playing the game. Where can I get what I need the easiest for free, or for a limited amount, rather than where should I have my space?

So do I support this? Yes. Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody’s going to use it because the people that wanted this proposal in there didn’t want the out-of-region taken out because that’s forum shopping. Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Any other questions or comments? Something online?

Ashley Perks: We do have two questions online. The first one is listed as Quantum, Dynamic Quantum Networks.

“Will ARIN 2025-3 put LIRs in a situation where they cannot request any resources from ARIN without renumbering their networks out of region when it’s not the case right now?”

I’m going to keep going because it’s kind of long, but that’s the question.

“For example, if an LIR doesn’t meet the proposed 80 percent in-region requirement but has a /22 used in region and wishes to request additional space for use within the ARIN region, they would be prohibited from doing so under the new policy when this wasn’t the case before. Since they can’t even request space for use inside the region, it would appear to require said LIR to renumber their networks out of region to meet the 80 percent in-region requirement before they can request any resources, which might be a big lift.

“The carve-out of organizations currently on the waiting list would not apply when the organization isn’t currently on the waiting list but may wish to get one” – sorry – “may wish to get on it in the future, after which they end up in this catch-22 situation.”

I know that was kind of long. Do you want me to read the question, the question first?

Gerry George: The second portion of it where it speaks about an organization wanting space, wanting additional space within the ARIN region. That part, could you repeat that?

Ashley Perks: The question where they want to request additional space for use within the ARIN region, he is saying, “If an LIR doesn’t meet the proposed 80 percent in-region requirement but has a /22 that is used in region, they would be prohibited from requesting additional space under the new policy when this wasn’t the case before.”

Gerry George: Yeah, I don’t think that’s what this policy addresses. This policy says that you have to use 80 percent of your space in the ARIN region to allow you to then request resources outside of the ARIN region. So the mention about needing to renumber, I don’t think that applies. But Eddie, I think, is –

Eddie Diego: Eddie Diego, ARIN Policy Analyst. I’ll be honest, I don’t quite follow the full question. But I think my takeaway is the current implementation looks at the entire aggregate of the organization’s holdings. It’s not separating usage in region needs to be 80 percent, versus usage outside of the ARIN region. It’s the entire aggregate has to be used at 80 percent in order to qualify for more. I think that might answer his overall question.

Gerry George: I should also add that the policy does not tell you how to use your space, whether it’s – or how to – well, how to use your space within the organization.

Ashley Perks: Sure. He does have a follow-up.

“Do we think it’s necessary to make such a change to the out-of-region use requirement to support a policy that relaxes the limitation to a /24? From the PPML and previous ARIN meetings, it seems like the goal of this policy change is to support Section 8 transfers, and we introduced this change due to fears of waiting list abuse as a result.

“I am not convinced this is the right way forward. Can we just keep a /22 requirement when requesting via Section 4.1.8 and avoid this drastic change?”

Gerry George: Okay. Let me see. How can I dissect that? The main aim of this policy is to reduce the requirement, the justification for smaller organizations. What’s been suggested sounds like maybe even a different policy altogether without taking away that support for smaller organizations to be able to qualify.

Nancy Carter: Go ahead, please.

Eddie Stauble: Eddie Stauble, IPTrading. I originated this Policy Proposal. And it, at first, was strictly to see needs demonstration and to lower that from – in ARIN, that you had to have a /22 to just have a /24. We had seen multiple cases of people who only had and only needed a /24 in ARIN, but did need space in other regions.

Basically what we end up doing, the best thing for them would be to get an ARIN legacy block, transfer it to RIPE as legacy, and they’re not paying anybody for the block. They’d much rather just be able to demonstrate need here in ARIN, but they can’t do that because they don’t have a /22.

So that was the original policy, and in my naivete, I did not realize that you could use out-of-region use or needs demonstration to go on the waiting list and get a block from the waiting list. And I thought that’s not right. ARIN space should be used in ARIN.

Hence, we modified it to say if you use out-of-region needs demonstration, you can’t get the block from any of the ARIN free resources.

Some people didn’t like that because they currently can do it. But, again, not thinking that was fair to the ARIN members. Everybody that we’ve had that could have benefited from this policy was coming to us as an IPv4 broker and purchasing a block from somebody else. And they ended up, like I say, getting RIPE blocks – or ARIN blocks moved to RIPE. So that’s it.

Now, as far as the usual needs demonstration, I’m not quite sure where this 80 percent came in. I know just for needs demonstration in general, there’s two ways you can do it. You either are using 80 percent of the space you have – my understanding is that would be regardless of where it’s being used – and then you would qualify for as much space as you currently have. Or you are using 50 percent of the space you have and you plan to use 50 percent of the space you’re looking to get within two years. Maybe somebody at ARIN can speak to that.

Eddie Diego: Eddie Diego, ARIN. You’re exactly correct.

Nancy Carter: Go ahead.

Doug Camin: Doug Camin, Cortland County, also ARIN AC Vice Chair. I’ve been engaged in some of the discussion here with this, so just want to kind of reiterate some of that discussion that’s happened on PPML surrounding this.

Eddie, appreciate your comments. I think they’re helping to clarify as well.

The intent here revolves around qualification and qualification only. Not use, not where you can use it, not how you can use it later and things of that nature. And it’s only for the qualification under those three sections.

Some of them, as Kevin pointed out – I think I pointed out in an email earlier, they do have a certain no op component, like the critical infrastructure, there is no specific requirement to justify need status. If you qualify, you qualify, essentially in that particular instance.

I think there’s certainly a question of whether or not having that restriction there in the future is important or not to the community.

But I think going back to the question that Quantum had put forward, the components that show up here can only go to qualification, and that use, that 80 percent that you’re referencing, I think that’s a trail that you follow from 4.10 – not 4.10, Wait List justification – 4.1.8 Wait List justification.

If you trail through, there’s a couple steps you have to follow. And eventually you get to one of the qualification criterias for that, which is that there’s that utilization component for it. It shouldn’t be that big of a lift. I would say that is an opinion of mine, but that is where that component comes from, and it’s pretty narrowly tailored to that one component of it. Thank you.

Gerry George: Thanks, Doug.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire.

One thing we were talking about was the 80 percent. I want to talk about it from – I think it plays directly in this – I would rather see this policy sit around and let it go back and forward and do it right, because we have butterfly effect.

Anything you touch in Section 4 spreads out and suddenly you’re getting stomped on because there’s so much involved, there’s so much history with Section 4, for probably the least used section now because it’s predominantly in Section 8. And staff can clarify my statement if it is accurate. But my understanding was that most work that goes on today is Section 8 and never touches Section 4. But what I do know is Section 4 has a massive butterfly effect.

If this policy is going to create that butterfly effect with the out-of-region thing, now /22 holders are going to have a problem, you’re creating problems for a new group of people that you tried to solve for another group of people, then let’s hold off and actually talk to the people who are actually impacted who don’t seem to be in this room, which is the other problem.

There’s a lot of people who are saying why they need this for other people but not necessarily themselves. I have not actually heard anybody in this room say, I am directly impacted by this policy. It’s all straw people. Thank you.

Hollis Kara: Nancy, I’ll note we have a question or two online that we might want to take.

Nancy Carter: Can I ask you to read one of the questions, Ashley, please?

Ashley Perks: Absolutely. We have one from June Slater, self, no affiliation. “ARIN is already quite strict about restricting membership to in-region entities. I don’t believe there is a substantial risk of forum shopping.

“Based on current allocation patterns, we’re not going to exhaust special use anytime soon. ARIN’s staff are quite strict with special purpose space allocations. Even a second /24 is quite a difficult thing to acquire.

“Do we have data showing a problem? Without the special use restrictions, i.e., if only lowering a /22 to a /24, I would be in support.”

Nancy Carter: Thank you. Do you have another one, Ashley?

Ashley Perks: I do. We’ve got a follow-up from Quantum, Dynamic Quantum Networks.

“I am very confused by the answer given previously. ARIN seems to look at your existing usage, and based on the PPML discussion and ARIN AC Vice Chair response, it appears that ARIN looks at your existing use and would check that you have 80 percent use in region once we deny out-of-region justification. This would appear to apply to any request, since ARIN doesn’t care what you are using the resources for. Hence, you would not be able to request more addresses to meet the 80 percent in-region requirement.”

John Sweeting: Okay. Maybe a different answer from me. John Sweeting, ARIN Chief Experience Officer.

I don’t know where the 80 percent of in-region is coming from in that question because there’s no such thing in the Number Resource Policy. It’s 80 percent of your holdings, your ARIN direct allocated holdings of IPv4, that’s what’s measured.

Nancy Carter: Thanks for the clarification, John.

Mike Burns: Mike Burns, IPTrading. I just wanted to speak about the argument that solely because somebody who is affected by this policy is not here or is not coming to the mic makes them a straw person. These are real persons. Real companies. We’re a broker. We deal with these companies, and we know this affects very small companies, primarily. They’re real. They’re not straw. And these very small companies don’t come to these meetings, and even if they do, they don’t generally come to the mic.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

Doug Camin: Doug Camin, Cortland County, ARIN AC, Vice Chair. I just wanted to clarify that all of my statements are intended as clarification and not as an advocacy one way or another for the policy.Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Thank you. Anything else online?

Ashley Perks: We have one more. Altie Jackson, ARIN AC candidate. “I support this policy as written, somewhat. Could we move this to a /26 with specific criteria for out of region?”

Gerry George: Noted.

Hollis Kara: We’ve got one more, then we need to close microphones and go to a vote.

Paul Rendek: I’m Paul Rendek, advisory board of IPXO. If we’re just moving from a /22 to a /24, I could support this as well. I think that these days these /24 allocations, I mean you’ve got companies, even substantial companies, running off of a /24, and if they’ve got something out of region and their business is moving, I think it would be quite a disservice from ARIN to stop somebody doing business outside, and maybe stop you from having to go and jump around to all the different registries.

If you identify as a LIR, as a member of ARIN, and you get your address space here, /22, /24, is there really a difference? I don’t think so.

Hollis Kara: Thank you. One last question.

Michelle Garcia: Michelle Garcia, Caribbean Telecommunications Union. I support this policy as written, coming from the Caribbean, this policy would tend to have an overall positive impact on smaller companies.

Nancy Carter: Thank you for that.

Hollis Kara: Ashley, do we have anything else online?

Ashley Perks: We have one more follow-up from Quantum, Dynamic Quantum Networks. “I was told by the ARIN Vice Chair that the 80 percent of in-region use will be the effect of this policy on the PPML. If that’s not how everyone understands this, then there is confusion in what this policy is trying to accomplish.”

Hollis Kara: All right. Thank you. With that, I think we’re ready to go to the poll, Nancy.

Nancy Carter: Okay. So please raise your hand if you’re in favor of this policy as written. Raise your hand. Raise it high, and leave it up until the counters have finished counting, please.

Hollis Kara: The poll is also up online for our virtual participants. So please do the thing.

Nancy Carter: You can put your hands down now. Thank you very much. Please raise your hand now if you’re opposed to this policy as written. Thank you.

Hollis Kara: All right. Tabulators are tabulating. Give them just a moment.

Michael Abejuela: All right. Michael Abejuela, ARIN Chief Legal Officer. For Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2025-3, Change Section 9 Out-of-Region Use Minimum Criteria, we had 100 participants in the room; 72 remote. Show of hands, we have 42 for and 13 against.

Nancy Carter: Thank you, Michael. Thanks, everybody.

Hollis Kara: Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Gerry.

(Applause.)

All right. Moving right along. We’ve got Recommended Draft 2025-7: Make Policy in 6.5.8.2 Match the Examples. And coming up we have Lily Botsyoe to present.

Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2025-7: Make Policy in 6.5.8.2 Match the Examples

Lily Botsyoe: Hi, everyone. Last night I was shorted on this. Today I have a lawyer, so I can speak to the whole room.

Thank you for engaging with this policy. Leif and I are shepherding it. It’s been great so far.

Today we want to give you a summary and to ask an important question. So this policy in essence outlines a proposal to resolve a mathematical loophole in IPv6 initial allocation size.

And then the Problem Statement is pretty much speaking about the current 75 percent rule, which inadvertently qualifies single site networks for a /44 instead of the intended /48 baseline.

So moving on to the Policy Statement. The existing Policy Statement bases the size boundaries strictly on a 75 percent calculation and that creates a contradiction between the general rule and the single site baseline.

And what is changing? So for the current or revised proposed text, we have the revision set on a single site at /48 allocation and reserves the multisite calculation starting at two or more sites.

And one of the things, all I’ve said, is accommodated with the red lines you see on there.

We also had some changes happening with most of the places where we see things along assignments, moving to now allocations.

This was mentioned from ARIN 57 and also on PPML. Now, for the Statement on Conformance, yes, this has been reviewed and confirmed to be fair, technically sound and aligns with what it says that it’s registry text and with standard practice.

It has been at a couple of meetings, started about a year ago. Gone through multiple community revisions over the past yearto reach the Recommended Draft Policy status right now.

For the Staff and Legal Review also, ARIN staff confirmed that a change clarifies single site sizing and replaces obsolete assignments. Yes, that’s what the red line was. It changes the obsolete assignments right now terminology without affecting anything regarding day-to-day operations.

Continuing with the Staff and Legal, the proposal also carries no legal risk or registry impacts, and pretty much requires only routine documentation, updates and staff training. That’s what we see right now on the slide.

For the policy impacts, what you’re seeing is that we are – by way of the revision, the policy eliminates the mathematical loophole while pretty much updates and modernizing the vocabulary to match current allocation models.

And the community feedback, like I mentioned, on PPML and over the past ARINs has pretty much been supportive, and we hear people say, hey, we want to – if the changes were to be made, particularly regarding the terminology updates from that submit allocation, it would pretty much be the same across what it says that it is in the industry and across the NRPM and also help restructure the /48 baseline.

So we have one question for you. Here is where we really need support from you or to either come to the microphone or vote when it’s time.

We are seeking the final show of support from the room for adopting this policy. And I think we’ll have the Board Chair come help us in that regard, and just happy to hear from all of you.

Hollis Kara: Awesome, Nancy, I see you’ve joined us. Microphones are open. If anybody has questions or comments on this policy, virtual attendees, please also submit your comments and questions at this time.

Lee Howard: Lee Howard, again not speaking for the Board, just asking my own questions. The new text says justifying, having two to 12 sites, will receive a /44.

I believe in some other places in the policy manual, it says that organizations who justify a certain amount of space may elect to receive less space because maybe they don’t want to pay that fee schedule, they want a lower place on the fee schedule.

I just wanted to make sure that it’s clear whether having eight sites means you will receive a /44 or may receive a /44.

Lily Botsyoe: I think I’ll loop in ARIN staff so it’s said the correct way. If John Sweeting can come to the microphone, that would be great.

Lee Howard: Is there flexibility?

Nancy Carter: Or may receive.

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, ARIN Chief Experience Officer. Yes, even though we do like the comments that we’re very strict, we’re very reasonable as well. Yes, there’s flexibility.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I support this policy. This original text came out of 2015. It came out of 2015 because it was supporting a problem that had occurred, which is we had different fee schedules for end users and ISPs, and the policies in IPv6 around end users was far more difficult to get space than as an ISP. As an ISP, you show up. Here’s your /32. Right?

As an end user, there were a whole bunch of hoops you had to go through. So in 2015, they came up with this. That fee schedule is gone. The remnants still exist. Yes, you’re making it easier, but the reality is, an LIR – because there is no such thing as end user anymore – an LIR that needs space should just be able to say what space they need up to a /32, which is what is in the thing, and they can define it any way.

Do I support this? Yes. It makes it a little easier, but really this should be for the community a cleanup that just says, anything you want and can justify up to a /32 is fine, and if you want to say that you have eight sites and you define your apartment, each room in your apartment or each closet in your apartment as a site, wonderful.

If you decide that you are a national organization and all eight sites are different buildings or you define them as one building. But ultimately, we need to simplify this, especially with IPv6, and go away from this historical billing exercises that we have in the document. Thank you.

Lily Botsyoe: Noted.

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, Chief Experience Officer with ARIN. I want to clarify one thing that Kevin said. He said there’s no end user policies. There are end user policies that still apply to direct allocations, for both IPv4 and IPv6.

Kevin Blumberg: There’s no end user billing fee schedule. That’s what I’m trying to state.

John Sweeting: That’s true.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. Pretty much support this policy as written. But I would like to echo Lee’s concern. The proposed text says “an organization will qualify for.” And in the bullet points it says “will receive,” and there seems to be a disconnect there.

Lily Botsyoe: Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Anything online, Ashley?

Ashley Perks: Nothing online.

Hollis Kara: One more on the floor.

Scott Johnson: Just to echo another earlier comment, I’d like clarification on what a site is defined as.

Lily Botsyoe: Hm. Eddie? Clearly ARIN defines it.

Hollis Kara: Hold on, we’re looking that up for you, Scott. Somebody’s going to have to get on mic so we have it on the transcript. Work with me, guys.

Matthew Wilder: By the way, it’s handy to pull up NRPM in case you want to search these things. Matthew Wilder, ARIN Advisory Council. NRPM Section 2.10, “End site. End site shall mean a single structure or service delivery address, or, in the case of a multi-tenant structure, a single tenant within said structure, a single customer location.”

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. Since we’re talking IPv6, NRPM’s Section 2.14 might be more appropriate.

“When applied to IPv6 policies, the term “serving site” means a location where an ISP terminates or aggregates customer connections, including, but not limited to points of presence, data centers, central or local switching office or regional or local combinations thereof.”

Nancy Carter: Thank you, Adair.

Lily Botsyoe: Thank you, Adair.

Nancy Carter: Anything online? Still good? Great. Let’s move to: Do you support this policy as written? If you do, please put your hand up, raise it high and leave it up so that the counters can count.

Hollis Kara: Poll is up online for our virtual attendees. Big thank you to Ken for his DJ styles while voting.

Nancy Carter: You can put your hands down. Thank you. If anybody is opposed to this policy as written, please raise your hand and leave it up so the counters can count you.

Hollis Kara: All right, tabulators are tabulating.

Michael Abejuela: Michael Abejuela, ARIN Chief Legal Officer. 2025-7: Make Policy in 6.5.8.2 Match the Examples, we had 115 in the room, 78 remote. With 67 for and two against.

Nancy Carter: Thank you, Michael.

Hollis Kara: Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Thanks, Lily. (Applause.)

Hollis Kara: All right. I love to see this great participation. This is, as we’ve said previously – you’ll hear again – your meeting. But in order to not be discussing policy hangry, we’re going to go ahead and break for lunch. We’re going to move our next recommended draft to start the next Policy Block after the break, and we will adjust the rest of the afternoon further as needed in order for you guys to have all the time you need to talk about the draft policies as well.

So please go out and head on out and enjoy lunch on the East Mezzanine, right where we had breakfast. We’ll be back at 1:30. For our virtual attendees – also please do look for the table topics, noting that we’ve got the four AC-led topics as discussed, and then a Caribbean engagement table with Bevil Wooding.

For our virtual attendees, feel free to just leave the Zoom hanging and go take a break, and we’ll be back at 1:30. Thanks.

(Lunch taken at 12:20)

Hollis Kara: All right, I need folks to come back and join us in the room so we can pick back up with policy. What slide are we on here? That’s not where we’re supposed to be.

Here we go. Everybody coming. We’ve got one more Recommended Draft Policy, and then we’ll go into our five drafts. Everybody enjoy lunch? Lunch was good? Yep, lunch was good. Yay, lunch. Desserts were good.

I need everybody to come back so we can get through this, so that Alison doesn’t have to remember her presentation any longer than – I’m trying to move it along. Help a sister out. I think it’s okay, I think they’re coming. Here comes Kaitlyn.

All right, we are going to pick it back up with Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2025-8: Reserve 4.10 Space for In-Region Use. Kaitlyn, come on over.

(Applause.)

Recommended Draft Policy ARIN-2025-8: Reserve 4.10 Space for In-Region Use

Kaitlyn Pellak: I’m going to bring my own step stool next time. Hi, everybody. Super glad I don’t need to rush through this and prevent you all from having lunch. So welcome back.

This is Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2025-8: Reserve 4.10 Space for In-Region Use. So 4.10 space is IPv4 space allocated to facilitate IPv6 deployment. Currently, Out-of-Region use of those addresses is only addressed within NRPM Section 9.

Note I’m saying “only addressed in NRPM in Section 9.” However, given that staff have determined that using these IPv4 addresses out of region seems contrary to their intended purposes, they interpret Out-of-Region use to be prohibited for these allocations.

Very simple Policy Statement. This IPv4 allocation will be set aside and dedicated to facilitate IPv6 deployments within the ARIN service area. That’s the only change we’re making.

So we did do a Statement of Conformance here. I will say this policy, if adopted, clarifies within the NRPM itself current staff practices of managing these allocations. We’re just clarifying how staff is already interpreting this policy. I will note that a small subset of the community voiced a concern that the language, as it was, is too ambiguous.

Conversely, the policy has received quite a bit of support, both in an experience report that led to this policy being created and at several meetings ever since this policy was submitted to us.

We found that this policy is fair and impartial and technically sound.

Quick timeline – came in 2025. We’ve been working away, trying to move fairly quickly here.

Don’t want to take up too much time.

Staff and Legal. Again, you’re going to hear me say this a couple times, this policy does not alter existing staff review practices. It documents the current approach that staff use and continue to apply. So we are documenting current practice.

Pretty minimal implementation requirements here. I think it’s just about the bare minimum that is necessary to get this implemented.

One last time with feeling. The intention of this policy is to align how ARIN staff interpret 4.10 allocations today with the actual language itself within the NRPM. This will eliminate confusion within the community on how these 4.10 allocations are managed.

Community feedback. Again, I said this policy is the result of a past Policy Experience and Implementation Report. I believe the question was specifically posed to the community before this policy was submitted as a draft to ask if the community agreed with the staff interpretation of the policy at that meeting and at the two subsequent meetings where the actual Policy Proposal has been presented. In the room, pretty much overwhelming support. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a single naysayer at any meeting.

However, the PPML does have some concerns, and I would like to bring them to the community here, just to align everybody. There have been two concerns mainly, and I’m going to summarize them.

The first concern is that the current language is a bit ambiguous. So I’m just going to say if you agree with that concern, I would ask that you please come to the mic, speak up online if possible.

I would love to hear additional either support or no support for that concern.

And then the second concern, in short, is that this policy or this proposal seems unnecessarily protective. So I’m going to go back to that Policy Implementation and Experience Report that was presented before this policy even came about.

We asked the community if you felt like this was the right thing to do. The community said yes.

And essentially the question was posed, are these allocations susceptible to abuse? So the short answer, yes. And I’m going to actually quote the Registry Integrity Report here. This policy is highly abused using the following abuse factors: Announced out of region; reassigned/reallocated to customers; leasing as IPv4 space; and announced with no associated IPv6 being announced. So that is directly from last year’s integrity report.

And I actually do want to note, there was a third concern brought up on the PPML after these slides had already been written. Essentially, that concern was relating to how implementation of this policy could impact Anycast utilization or Anycast advertisement. So if ARIN’s staff have any notes or thoughts on that, I will leave that to them.

But otherwise, my question to you is, are you in favor of this policy as written?

Hollis Kara: All right. With that, Nancy, if you would come on up to help run the discussion.

And the poll. Microphones are open, and I believe we already have one question in online.

Ashley Perks: We do. Charlie Fish, rrainn LLC. Under current staff practice, can an existing Section 4.10 allocation be used simultaneously inside and outside the ARIN region for Anycast http proxies and authoritative DNS supporting IPv6 deployment without requesting additional space? If ARIN 2025-8 is adopted, would that change how the existing allocation may be used?

Kaitlyn Pellak: Thank you, Charlie, for saying that much better than I could.

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, ARIN CXO. Yes. It has to be used in the ARIN region. If Anycast, and it’s used anywhere, it doesn’t matter, it’s used in the ARIN region. That’s the criteria we look at.

Nancy Carter: Thanks, John.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I support this policy as written. The Anycast one, I was actually surprised to hear because this is something that has been discussed in countless meetings with the same answer. As long as it is used in the ARIN region, it’s considered used in the ARIN region.

But that’s not why I’m coming up here. Yes, I support this. I want to call back to 2015-5. 2015-5, Out-of-Region Use. Out-of-Region Use is not a de facto, standard, normal default operation. In fact, for many years, it didn’t exist.

The reality is we have a Regional Internet Registry system that you get things for the region that you operate in. 2015-5 looked at the realities of the business landscape and said, we understand that some people are going to use space out of the region. But by and large, it will be used in the region, so we will allow a little bit about it.

The problem that we have now is that people are reading it in a vacuum, Section 9, in a vacuum, and expecting that all space should suddenly be out of region.

My only concern – I support this 100 percent – my concern is, we are putting in obvious. Obvious is 4.10 should not be used out of region because that’s the norm. The norm is not out of region. And we’re adding in text to now say, so are we – the only question is, is there any other scenario where somebody would say, well, it doesn’t say can’t be used out of region, therefore, I can use it.

That’s my only concern. And hopefully you’ll be able to verify that yourself. And otherwise, I support this.

Nancy Carter: Thanks for your feedback, Kevin. Go ahead.

John Stitt: John Stitt, Hopkinsville Electric System energynet. I support this policy as written. To the point of the Anycast, I just wanted to mention that in the transcript from ARIN 57, it was brought up as a concern there that, would Anycast preclude the use of this space.

Roman Tatarnikov: Roman Tatarnikov, IntLos. I support this policy as written. As much as I’m hoping we can stop talking about IPv4 and focus more on IPv6, I also want to remind that we are a regional registry, so we have to care about everyone. And IPv4 is a major part of it.

If this allows us to advocate for more move from IPv4 to IPv6 and close a bunch of abuse loopholes, it is definitely one of those items that we should have done a long time ago. Hence, why I support as written.

Nancy Carter: Thank you. Adair.

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. I support this policy as written, and I would cautiously offer support for any subsequent policies to address the concerns that were raised in the Registry Integrity Report.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. I support this draft, the policy as written. I think the 4.10 is kind of a critical, key enabler for small networks to begin operation. And anything we can do to protect that resource is a good thing.

Nancy Carter: Thank you,

Hollis Kara: We have two more online, Nancy.

Ashley Perks: We do. Quantum, Dynamic Quantum Networks. “How does this differ from ARIN 2025-3, whose current wording has a similar prohibition? Also, has ARIN’s interpretation of this clause changed over time. The current language says ARIN staff has discretion. Is that fair to call it abuse if ARIN staff has approved it at the time of request?”

Nancy Carter: Let’s call a friend.

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, CXO, ARIN. Could you read that again. I don’t quite –

Ashley Perks: Sure. Quantum is asking, how does this differ from ARIN 2025-3, whose current wording has a similar prohibition? Also, has ARIN’s interpretation of this clause changed over time? The current language says ARIN staff has discretion. Is that fair to call it abuse if ARIN staff has approved it at the time of request?

John Sweeting: Not to get too deep, if ARIN’s staff approved it, we won’t call it abuse later. We always look at, if something’s been approved by ARIN in the past, based upon the policies at that time, then we don’t change that. We take it that they were approved based on the policy at that time and they’re still approved. We’re not going to change policies in midstream, unless there’s a policy that says we have to.

John Curran: I think it’s a question of something you just approved and months later you see – maybe not something long-ago approved. If you approved it six months ago, how can you call it abuse now?

John Sweeting: And that would have to be a case – if something was approved three months ago and we’re calling it abuse today, I don’t know when that has ever happened, and I’d have to know and look at that.

John Curran: Whether or not someone’s original application was accurate.

John Sweeting: Correct, if their original application was not accurate, then yes, we could call it abuse, but that would entail going into a Section 12 audit of how they requested it and what they’re using it for, and if their intent was to get it through deceit.

Kaitlyn Pellak: I did just want to add, I think the original – there was a first question about the relationship between this and another policy. So I just wanted to note that AC does consider policies in a vacuum. So we look at each policy individually, just in general.

Ashley Perks: Okay, we have one more for now. “June Slater, self, but speaking for several other small networks that cannot be here today. There’s already a prohibition on out-of-region entities, and we have not seen evidence of notable abuse. Does that evidence exist as numbers? Leasing does not seem to be relevant to any of the data that was just cited.

“That’s not necessarily a region violation and is another matter. Opposed on the grounds that is unnecessary and makes operations unnecessarily difficult for new, legitimate operators.

“Whether or not ARIN staff policy is aligned with the NRPM is another matter. Additionally opposed on the grounds that language remains ambiguous.”

And I do have one more. Altie Jackson, no affiliation. “I do support the policy as written.”

And I’ve got one more if you want to go for it.

Nancy Carter: Go ahead.

Ashley Perks: Leo Medvinski, LX Aer Communications. “I support this policy as written, but I believe that more work must be done to protect against 4.10 abuse, such as those that just lease this space out or assign it to customers for purposes unrelated to the intent. I believe that could warrant some separate policy discussions.”

And that’s the queue.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

John Sweeting: So I can comment – I can comment on that. We have a team at ARIN – John Sweeting, CXO – we have a team at ARIN that is called the Registry Integrity and Oversight Team. And they spend 90 percent of their time tracking 4.10 and possible violations. We have a lot of it reported to us. We do a lot of Section 12s on 4.10 space being used, being leased.

We have good relationships with a lot of people that are the big leasers of IPv4 space out there, and they make sure that that particular space does not get put on their platforms. So we do a very high level of investigations on 4.10 and the way it’s being used to protect the community and the wishes of their policy.

Nancy Carter: Thanks, John.

Anybody else? Any other? No. Great. Well done. Are you in favor of the policy as written? If you are, please put up your hand, leave it up there for a while while our counters count.

Hollis Kara: Poll is up online for virtual participants.

Nancy Carter: You can put your hands down. Thank you.

If you’re opposed to this policy as written, now is the time to raise your hand. Please raise it and keep it up while the counters count. Thank you.

Hollis Kara: Tabulation in process. Please stand by.

Michael Abejuela: Michael Abejuela, ARIN Chief Legal Officer. We have Recommended Draft Policy, ARIN 2025-8: Reserve 4.10 Space for In-Region Use. In the room, we had 89 participants, remote 75. We have 64 in favor and four against.

Nancy Carter: Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Kaitlyn. Thanks, everybody.

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Kaitlyn and Nancy. (Applause.)

That concludes our Recommended Draft Policies. Next up we’ll start with Draft Policy 2026-1: Taking IP to Other Planets with Alison Wood.

Policy Block 2

Draft Policy 2026-1: Taking IP to Other Planets (TIPTOP)

Wood Alison: Hey, everybody. My name is Alison Wood. And the cool thing about this policy is nobody has to raise their hand at the end because it’s still in draft status. But in lieu of raising your hand, I would love you guys to come to the mic and give me your feedback.

So my name is Alison Wood. This is TIPTOP or ARIN policy 2026-1. Brian Jones is my esteemed co-shepherd. And I usually like to start this topic with a joke. However things went off the rails at ARIN 57 when your topic includes moons and celestial regions that are the butt of many jokes, things get a little crazy. So I’m just going to jump right into it and we’re going to talk about ARIN 2026-1, unless, of course, you have a joke.

So the current text, since ARIN 57, has not changed. This policy came in as having IP address space for different celestial regions. And we did a couple of things with that policy. We defined what an extraterrestrial region is, extraterrestrial network, and then we wrote this policy to request both IPv4 and IPv6 space for celestial regions.

As I continue with this presentation, you’ll find that IPv4 is eventually going to drop out of this Policy Proposal, but today it is still in it.

All right. Here is our Policy Statement. Again, this hasn’t changed since ARIN 57. But a lot in space has changed since then. So I can’t wait to talk to you about it.

If anyone wants me to go slower on the Policy Statement, let me know. But, again, nothing has changed.

All right, so the history of this policy: It came to us in March of this year. And we got that policy. We revised it a bit to make it fit the criteria of an ARIN policy. And it is what’s called a Draft Policy with us right now. That means we’re still discussing it. It’s in discussions in meetings, in our ARIN Advisory Council meetings. It is not in a revised or recommended status yet. And it may never be, but we’re working on it.

All right, we had a Staff and Legal Review that found this policy is not able to be implemented as written today. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but the main gist is that as this is still in development, there’s a lot of things that would have to happen before it could become policy.

So there is some IETF Working Groups that are working on different things within the IETF. One of them is protocols. What protocol would we use for Internet connectivity in outer space? One of them is use cases. What are the use cases? How would we define celestial regions, right – planets, moons, rovers, there are so many different options here.

Then the third, if I didn’t say it already, was IPv6 dedicated space in outer space.

All of those Working Groups have been submitted, but nothing has actually been adopted yet. There is an IETF meeting next month, so we’ll see how that progresses.

Once these topics make it through the Working Groups, then IETF would have to approve it and then IANA would have to dedicate a block of space, whether it’s IPv6 or IPv4. And then that space would then be distributed out amongst the ARIN RIR.

Then to get there, there’s a lot of pieces with the NRO. The ARIN Board would have to approve it.

So today, as written, this isn’t something that we could put into the Network [Number] Resource Policy Manual. But we’re getting there. And this is why we need community feedback. We need to know your ideas, your thoughts. Again, we’re talking about policy.

But if you have any technical questions, bring those to the table as well. We do have some technical space experts in the room with us.

All right. That was a lot of Staff in Legal.

Okay, all right. So what’s changed? What’s changed since we all met in Louisville. Oh, my gosh, so much has changed. About a month ago NASA awarded a $700 million contract to a company called Blue Origin to develop space networking on Mars. The deadline to have that up and operational is 2030. So things are moving at the speed of light. It’s quite amazing.

Then just last week, Google launched Project Suncatcher into space. Project Suncatcher is a simulated AI data center. So none of this was happening six months ago when I met with you guys last time.

Again, it’s moving so quickly, which is why it’s so critical that we get your input on how this policy should move forward. Right? We need to be ready as an Internet registry to help continue this along and not be a black hole – a black hole.

(Laughter.) All right, thank you, thank you.

All right, so I talked about it a moment ago, but these are the different things that the IETF Working Groups are quickly and competently working on. We’re just seeing tremendous progress in those areas.

The IETF Working Groups don’t represent all of space networking, however. So there are new groups popping up every day, and there’s a lot of work being done on protocols, on how this is going to work. We have all kinds of different simulators and things that are being developed to find out what is the best way to communicate celestially. It’s almost a time of orbital compute for us right now, which is so incredibly exciting.

Okay, let’s see here. So these are the different changes that have been moving around over in the IETF world. And if you’re familiar with the other RIRs, TIPTOP has been presenting at their different meetings. So the word is out.

And here’s just more of the information on what’s going on in the IETF. And I just want to take a moment to address this one, which is IPv6 address space in outer space. So within our policy in the ARIN region, again, we right now have a definition for a block of IPv4 space.

When we met in Louisville, you guys expressed that that was not something that you wanted to see moving forward. And so that information was passed back to the Working Group, and then they were able to put together a draft that takes IPv6 moving forward and drops IPv4 off. That’s super exciting and that’s all because of the community feedback from all of you, and I so appreciate it.

All right, community, let’s keep it going.

Let’s keep that progress moving. You guys are the brains of the operation. And so I would love for you to come to the mic to share your ideas, to share your thoughts on how we continue to mature this.

I’ve certainly heard a lot of things today. We had an amazing table topic, and I am so honored to have spoken with all of you at our table. I also spoke to a lot of you at NANOG. So your opinions, your thoughts, and your ideas are what we need right now, so I highly encourage you to come to the mic and share all that. Again, if you have questions about policy, I’m your girl. If you have questions about the technologies, certainly ask them. There are experts in the room.

Hollis Kara: All right, if we’re ready to move to discussion, Nancy, come on down. I see we already have one gentleman at the mic, and I know we have one question online. Which would you like to take first?

Alison Wood: Can we go with Scott?

Nancy Carter: Yeah, go ahead.

Hollis Kara: Sure.

Scott Johnson: Hi. Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. I would advise everyone to buckle up, because I’m going to be here for a minute. I have several points to go over.

On the topic of relevance of this policy here and now, I would like to point out the time horizon and the guidance required for space agencies and other commercial entities in launching spacecraft that have communications, and all of them do.

Typically, you’re looking at a six- to 18-month window for deploying a terrestrial network. When you’re considering a spacecraft, you’re looking at more like four to five to 10 years. And in order to specify a protocol or a subsystem or a stack or anything for a space operation, it must be at what we call a technology readiness level, or TRL, of 9 today in order to get specified for a future mission. So it is important that we continue this discussion here in a relevant and open forum.

I would point out that the TIPTOP Working Group does not represent all of the stakeholders in space networking. However, that is kind of not relevant. There are kind of two thoughts on this that – TIPTOP represents an IP-only network, whereas other constituency would see a hybrid bundle protocol, RFC 9171, and Internet protocol network deployed. Okay?

But that is kind of irrelevant to this discussion, because we’re only talking about do we allocate IP addresses for off-world use or not.

To that end, all of the constituency has arrived – all of the relevant constituency has arrived at a reasonable consensus that this is kind of a good idea to do, both for the purpose of routing aggregation, if it winds up being an IP network or for the purpose of disambiguation and placing these networks as martians in your routers if it works out that it is an IP and bundle protocol specification hybrid.

I will point out that the mission that you mentioned to Mars from Blue Origin earlier has specified bundle protocol explicitly for its use, as well as the lunar network interoperability specification produced by NASA and other space agencies explicitly specify bundle protocol use in space networks.

So the argument kind of against using an IP-only stack includes both security and the potential viability of any such solution. And the argument against a bundle protocol-inclusive network is the complexity. And to many of us, it is a new technology. It represents a complete network stack. It is not a function of an underlying network, but a complete network stack unto itself.

This discussion has played out through many different venues over many different – over several years now. And I appreciate that it has come to ARIN, because even if ARIN is not the final repository of all of the allocation of these IP address blocks, if this is distributed to the RIRs or, indeed, may even happen inside a new RIR, that discussion has begun here and advanced to this point, allows us to, as a larger community, reach consensus in a public and open forum.

And I think that’s very important that as we continue this discussion, we continue it here and we continue it in a way that allows us to reach the relevant policy agreements, even if those do not become implemented directly from this draft into ARIN policy.

Alison Wood: Thank you very much, Scott. Can I just respond to that? Perfect, thank you so much.

I wanted to inform the community, too, that in reference to what Scott was saying and from your input in the last meeting, I have reached out to several government space agencies as well as commercial space operators to get their opinion, to find out what their needs are, to see how they would like this to go.

And we have certainly had many conversations around, how do we do this, do we have a new RIR for this? And the feedback on that has been that it may come at a great cost. And otherwise, do we take those blocks from IANA and then separate them based on celestial regions and have them deployed or disseminated from each RIR?

I would really, again, love your feedback on that. But certainly we are taking all things under consideration as we work through this policy.

Scott, I really appreciate your help with that. Thank you.

Scott Johnson: Sure. And just as an addendum, I noticed that the Draft Policy is intended to be amended to exclude IPv4. It is the general consensus of the community that off-world networks should be IPv6 only.

Alison Wood: Agreed. And when I did meet with the IETF Working Group on that, they asked that I let it remain until they reached the approval status with IETF.

Hollis Kara: We do have an online question that’s been queued up for a bit.

Ashley Perks: Charlie Fish, rrainn LLC. “I strongly support an IPv6-only framework. IPv4 is scarcity, and the complexity of working around it are problems we should leave behind, not extend into space. We can build these networks on IPv6 from the outset, and these decisions could shape infrastructure for generations. We shouldn’t saddle these future networks with another long-lived dependency on IPv4.

“Given that ARIN 2026-1 excludes LEO and GEO, has there been outreach to commercial operators such as SpaceX and Amazon Leo? Even if their existing networks aren’t directly covered, they could become transit providers connecting Earth to lunar and interplanetary networks. Their input seems important to an addressing framework supporting multiple independent networks and transit providers.”

Alison Wood: Absolutely. I agree wholeheartedly. We would like to future-proof this topic as much as we can as it moves forward. I have reached out to, again, both commercial and government space operators. And we are in a bit of a chicken-and-an-egg situation where the technologies are still being developed. And with that, everybody’s kind of working and waiting together, in tandem, I suppose, as we’re working forward with that.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I love space. I truly love space. I think most of us in this room love space.

Alison Wood: Agreed.

Kevin Blumberg: The advocacy on an out-of-scope policy is incredible. This policy has nothing to do with the current ARIN NRPM. Going out to stakeholders, I have never heard of before. They come when it’s required. We investigate.

But the advocacy, unfortunately, on an out-of-scope – go back, look. We want this to be a global RIR and we’ll talk to the NRO. And that is incredible.

This needs to go away. Not that we need to not deal with it. At some point we will deal with it. At some point we will have table topics about it. But not as policy.

Until the IETF actually has a standard – which they don’t – I don’t want to repeat what happened with NATCG space, where our community got into a lot of, I’ll say, trouble for recommending the reservation of space outside of our remit. Because that’s what we’re essentially doing.

We’re going to formally adopt or write policy that potentially conflicts with the policies that the IETF have not yet ratified. Can we please do a chicken-and-egg, and let the chicken, in this case, which is the IETF, do their job. And come, once that’s done, we will find out what’s going on and all the stakeholders. But I am – I think the least harsh word I can say is, I am dismayed by this policy.

Alison Wood: Thank you, Kevin. Just a reminder. We did have a table topic today. If anybody wants to have a table topic later, I’m happy to. But, Kevin, I super appreciate your feedback on that.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group. To Kevin’s point, here we are. I am here to represent the community or at least a large chunk of the community in this discussion. And I will reiterate that given the planning horizon of these missions and the requirement that standards be in place and known before a mission can be planned, that is the reason why it is a relevant discussion here today.

Cody Franklin: Cody Franklin, Unified IT network engineering. Fantastic conversation we had today at the discussion table. I know there’s thought about, maybe this is premature, maybe this is a problem that isn’t yet a problem to be solved.

And to that, I want to remind everyone of the early days of IPv4. Many of us, myself included, don’t really, weren’t really around those days. But I’m sure when the IPv4 spectrum was divided up, it was like, we are never going to run out of IP addresses, right? And the Internet would look a lot different today if we had the understanding and the knowledge that we have today back then, right? The protocol stack would be very different.

And the reality is, we’re going to space. We’re going to the moon. We’re going to Mars. It’s happening. The only question is whether the people who design and build networks on the Earth, and thus have experience building and designing networks are going to contribute to the future of how that looks. We have an opportunity to plant the seeds for a tree that many of us will never sit under, will never administer networks on the moon or on Mars or in other parts of the solar system.

And, yes, we do need to think about how this is actually going to roll out, and there’s been bad rollouts of technology systems in the past. But organizations, regulatory bodies, whether public or private, are slow. It’s going to happen. Like SpaceX is going, Blue Origin is going, NASA is going. Other countries are going.

So we have, I think, two future paths, one is where we get ahead of this and we do outreach to industry partners who are actually building and deploying these systems and we come up with a plan and ARIN can submit a proposal that goes up and other folks can look at and review, and we can actually have a real framework. Or we can wait for the industry to decide for us. And then now we have this hodgepodge of terrestrial IP blocks that are out there in the Internet.

I don’t think we want that. I think we want clean, easy systems to work within for the future of manned and unmanned space exploration.

The other thing I would add is for those who are drafting the policy, my encouragement as both a network engineer and a massive space nerd is we need to be both humble and ambitious in how we approach this. Ambitious in thinking about the future, not just tomorrow, but 100 years from now, 200 years from now. And maybe that looks like an RIR, probably an RIR formed by the colony on Mars that rebelled and declared independence, right?

So there’s a great deal of ambition we have to have in this, and also a sense of humility, because we don’t know what the future has in store here. We don’t know what types of technologies are going to even be developed 100 years from now in space.

And so I think continuing to develop this Draft Policy with that sense of humility, but also ambition and thinking about multiple generations in the future is the way to go. And we have an opportunity to lay a foundation that, well, I mean, could make the Internet a much better technology stack for years to come. Thank you, guys.

Alison Wood: Thank you.

Hollis Kara: Thank you just a quick reminder before our next speaker. For the benefit of the human fingers at the end of the transcript, love the enthusiasm. If we could be enthusiastic just a tiny bit slower. Thank you.

Rob Seastrom: I’m Rob Seastrom. I’m between jobs right now, so I’m not stating an affiliation. And I will speak slowly.

The person who went before me spoke about the early days of IPv4. And I looked around the room and I said, oh, I remember some of other stuff from the early days of IPv4. I remember this thing called OSI. It was supposed to take over and be a really big thing. But it was rife with statements made by people who were out over their skis, and trying to push through standards.

There was this thing called GOSIP, G-O-S-I-P. It was supposed to be the government was going to do this, that and the other thing. And it was overwhelmed, it was overtaken by events with IP’s success. And I don’t see the mandate, based on these nine-year horizons and stuff, for us to get out over our skis with policy before we have good guidance from IETF to write that against. Thank you.

Alison Wood: Thanks, Rob.

Paul Rendek: Hi there. Hi there. I’m Paul Rendek. I’m here as IPXO Advisory Board, but I’m actually going to be speaking on behalf of myself, actually, not on behalf of IPXO.

Kevin, I can appreciate the statement that we probably don’t want to be forming policies around this at this time. That might be jumping the gun in that sense. But, having said that, I would love to see what’s coming out of the IETF. And I’d love to see somebody from the IETF talking here to this community, but not only this one, but globally in the RIR system about what possibly will be coming out of this that we could expect.

So that isn’t necessarily a policy discussion, but maybe a discussion for this room, because what I think is important is that the RIRs need to take a look at this. We are set up to be able to handle any integers, right, in that regard inside of the Internet. So if we are going to be looking at this, I think we could – this is something we could welcome.

I don’t think it’s something that should be plopped into ARIN. And I do understand that you’ve gone out, and I think it’s wonderful that you’ve spoken to some of those space agencies. But you probably haven’t spoken to the space agencies in Russia.

Alison Wood: That is correct.

Paul Rendek: And you haven’t spoken to the ones in China, right?

And if we look at how the system is set up, in order for this to work – and I want to be very clear about this – I would love, if something like this was going to happen, I would love for this to come into the RIR’s basket than for us to be discussing this with intergovernmental organizations. This is not where we would want this to go.

I think we would want to have this somewhere in a place where we that are like running the Internet or the Internet of the future have something to say about it. We’ve got all of this work that we’ve established over so many years. So I wouldn’t want to dismiss it that fast. Maybe just not in the policy space.

So having said that, I think this is something that really needs to go on to the plate of the NRO and on to our executives – sorry, John, you know I love you – this needs to go on to the execs of the RIRs. They need to discuss this, and they need to understand how we would approach this as a registry system, right, because I know that if we were going to take the integers – we know governments have relationships with their RIRs. However, they can be wobbly at times. But I think they accept where their integers are coming from now.

I think if we jump-start this and we do this properly, I can imagine that within those different jurisdictions, we would find ways to deal with these integers.

So I think we need to wait for the IETF to come and give us some kind of sign that they’re ready for this. We should put our hands up, if the execs agree with this, that we are capable of handling those integers and that we want to handle those integers. That’s the Boards and the executive team that need to decide that for the RIRs. And only then can we start talking about policy in any shape.

But I love it, and I really do hope that if this does go forward that we’re going to grab it in the RIR system and go.

Alison Wood: Thank you, Paul.

Nancy Carter: Adair.

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. I think I resonate most closely with Kevin’s point about this being a jurisdictional issue. And while I’m also sensitive to Scott’s very good point about this being a time-sensitive thing in terms of the lifecycle of development of things that need to happen before we get into space, I think that the extent of ARIN’s involvement in this policy at this point should be a statement that we support the work that’s going on, we’re open to collaborating with the other RIRs in the future, but that this is really in IANA’s hands.

Alison Wood: Thanks, Adair.

Nancy Carter: Scott.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, again, Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group. So I will note that inside the acronyms that represent a great many of these organizations, including ARIN and IANA, is the word Internet. We are discussing the solar system Internet and its growth.

As well, I participate in both the TIPTOP and the Delay Tolerant Networking Working Group at IETF, as well as being on the Board of the Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group.

I don’t think that we’re asking for policy here today. I’m thinking that we’re asking for a venue that is neutral to continue the discussion to consensus. And I’ll tell you why.

There is a siloing effect that happens inside this industry. It is not the same type of industry as we all enjoy that is open and discussive in the Internet.

This is kind of a different animal. And it is very difficult to bring all the stakeholders together under one roof. What I am asking, or what I see as a path forward, is to please allow this discussion to continue to its culmination, notwithstanding the political ramifications of it being an ARIN policy or an RIR policy or a new RIR policy or not.

Please allow us the venue here, in a neutral setting, to come to consensus such that those questions can then be answered.

(Applause.)

Alison Wood: Thank you. I just want to confirm that we’re talking about consensus of people’s opinions and thoughts, not consensus of the ARIN Advisory Council to make this a Recommended Draft Policy.

Scott Johnson: Correct. And that’s consensus of relevant stakeholders who have skin in the game in space networking.

Alison Wood: Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Lee, go ahead.

Lee Howard: Lee Howard. I should disclose that I’m a member of the NANOG Program Committee, but I have not consulted with them and do not speak for them. Other than as a member of the program committee, Paul, I’ve got you. I said I want to see, especially with our highlight topic being international connectivity this week, I said, does international include extraterrestrial? And we said, yes.

So I went and solicited some talks about interplanetary network architecture and protocols and addressing. Wes Eddy gave a presentation on Tuesday of this week that will be on YouTube and probably I missed it because I had to – I was chairing the other or moderating the other session. But it’s probably going to be an excellent introduction to the protocols as they currently stand.

Scott was also invited to give a talk but was unable to do it. But I’m sure he would look forward to doing another one of those again. So we are trying to bring towards the community some of the education for the state of play.

That said, I also do not speak for the IETF, but I am certain that they welcome and would encourage participation in the TIPTOP Working Group. Join a mailing list. In the Delay Tolerant Networking Group, join a mailing list. This is how IETF works. You join a mailing list, and you say, I have questions about the draft. And that’s exactly how they make decisions. They’re going in that direction.

Scott, do you want – I was also going to ask about the IPNSIG. I believe it’s an ISOC Chapter, right?

Scott Johnson: Yes, it’s interplanetary chapter of ISOC.

Lee Howard: It’s interplanetary chapter of ISOC, and I’m sure that’s also open.

So lots of ways for people, especially for people who are excited about this space, lots of ways to get more further involved and help drive consensus and be involved in the development of the technologies.

Alison Wood: Thank you, Lee.

Nancy Carter: Kevin.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire.

So there was a NANOG discussion, very similar in scope from this. And one of the things that I said then –and it holds true now, and one of my concerns is – you are impacting terrestrial networks with ideas about extraterrestrial networks, and they’re not the same.

I would love to see the policy that comes out of the IETF in terms of the protocol work that needs to be done here. There’s going to be significant protocol work that needs to be done. We, I think, are all aware of that. And it may very well be that we have a IPv6.biz, and it may very well be that the RIRs are perfectly set up to handle another number system, et cetera. It may be very improbable, or probable, I don’t know, that IPv6 is useful in space at a large distance in time. I don’t know. That may not be efficient enough. It may be the wrong unique identifier; they may change that. I don’t know. But that’s where the IETF comes in.

My concern is not having this discussion. I love this discussion. My concern is having this discussion within our policy forum.

What we are creating is a scenario where we are potentially impacting other stakeholders by saying we have jurisdiction over something that we don’t.

And that has terrestrial ramifications. Today ramifications.

So that is my ultimate concern. I would love to have discussions on this. I would love to have discussions on our new AR overlords that are coming. There’s lots of great discussions that we can have, but not necessarily in policy.

Paul Rendek: Once again, Kevin, he always gets me to come. – you’re the one that gets me to come back up here, Kevin. The two Canadians, I’m Canadian here as well. I love it.

Yes, I agree with you from the policy perspective, but what I haven’t seen and what I really would like to see is the executive teams of the RIR saying something to our communities, because I would hate to see the opportunity, whether it’s going to be there or not, to be missed because we haven’t actually been open enough to welcome – and we are – we know that we are communities across the globe in the RIR system that are open to handle these kinds of discussions. Not in the policy. I do agree with Kevin on that front. But I really do urge the RIR executive teams to actually take a look at this, have those discussions and say something inside of the communities or to their membership.

I love it. I’ve pulled John up to the mic.

John Curran: John Curran, CEO, ARIN. So the Staff and Legal for this Draft Policy has a few paragraphs that discusses prerequisites for implementation. It notes that you – yeah, so it notes that in order to issue address space for extraterrestrial networks, there needs to be a block allocated at the IETF for this purpose. And that hasn’t happened. It also notes that if ARIN were to be the one to provide services for that address block, it would require the executives of the RIRs to get together and decide that that made sense.

There was a time when ARIN provided default services until such time as other RIRs could get established. It also requires that this community wants ARIN to do that and the ARIN Board of Trustees concurs with that.

Well, those last two parts, this community wants ARIN to do that and our trustees support that, we need a way of this community to express that intent.

So we are a little bit chicken and egg in that there’s no address block at the IETF to allocate from. And there has not been a discussion among the RIR executive operationals about it. But those two circumstances could change in 30 days, 90 days, you don’t know.

The only way for the community to express that ARIN should do this if everything else lines up is through policy. And so that’s unfortunately sort of how this is before the community now. There’s a whole bunch of assumptions in the Staff and Legal Review that the community needs to presume. If it expresses its view on this, it’s expressing its view what should happen, presuming a bunch of other stuff does line up. So I just want to – that’s all in the Staff and Legal. Unfortunately, issued on April 1st, but still a valid Staff and Legal.

Nancy Carter: Please go ahead.

John Stitt: John Stitt, Huntsville Electric System. I don’t like to get too close because sometimes they’re a little hot and I get mic shy. So I will try to be slow-speaking.

A lot of what I planned on saying has already been said, but I do believe it’s important for people to come up and express that they believe the same things.

I do feel that it is – the policy that’s written in there is very premature in that the IETF policy hasn’t been done. I think if we were using policy just as a function to get the discussion going of would we be willing to do this, that should be what the policy is, is would we be willing to take that on when and if we were asked to do so.

Reading the IETF draft, in there it says that they are willing to have an RIR formed for this purpose but that that would be organizationally inefficient due to the small nature at this time. So having an existing RIR does make sense from that perspective.

But the big question for the community is, as John was saying, would we be willing to be that default registrar for that purpose until such time that it needed its own RIR? And so I think if we’re going to continue discussing the policy, the policy shouldn’t just be a boilerplate that we’re saying we don’t really matter what the words are right now, it should be are we or are we not willing to be that default registry.

Alison Wood: Awesome. Thank you, John.

Hollis Kara: All right, and we’re just going to clear this last queue and then move on to our next policy. So please, Scott.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson from Interplanetary Network and Special Interest Group. To Kevin and Mr. Curran’s point, yes, I absolutely agree that the IETF does need to act and direct the IANA to take action before any relevant action could be taken by ARIN or any other RIR.

That said, to provide a little background on the landscape in the IETF. There are two distinct thought groups or notions as to how this will move forward.

One is embodied in the TIPTOP Working Group, and it represents the desires of that constituency. The other is primarily in the Delay Tolerant Networking Group, which places IP networks out of scope explicitly in the charter.

Similarly, the TIPTOP Working Group places bundle protocol networks explicitly out of scope. So we’re kind of in a Catch-22 as to a place to find consensus.

That this discussion has been begun here is great progress that we have been unable to achieve before. And let me say that between these two camps, as applies to IP address allocation for off-world use, we are not that far apart. In general, we have consensus. There is minutia that needs to be addressed.

But in general, we have consensus. As to the legal aspects of this, please consider that there is very little law on the surface of the moon. There is the Outer Space Treaty from the ’60s. There’s a reasonably new and very small treaty, and none of it treats any of this.

We are in the wild west, and with that knowledge, I think it’s important for us to try to take the opportunity to achieve consensus wherever possible.

Alison Wood: Thank you, Scott.

Paul Rendek: Paul Rendek, advisory board IPXO. I wanted to answer the gentleman before this. Well, I did look at you, Scott, and you said that you’d be willing to rejig this, proposal, or this Policy Proposal could be rejigged so that it could suffice for what John was saying, that inside of our community we need to have something in the policy process. I agree with that. Like, make it something that we can have these discussions.

I joined the lunch table. Thank you for having me. I really did enjoy that. Answering the question on the registry, okay, I mean, if you’re looking at: “Could ARIN do this for a while and then bring it into the rest of the system?” Probably yes.

I think the other RIRs could see it. Who knows what that’s going to look like? That’s really far forward.

But what I can say is that we’ve got something called the NRO, and that body functions well, and ARIN plays very nicely in that space. So you very quickly can bring this to a global part – that’s what it was designed for.

And as far as looking even forward, if we want to do that, at any kind of another Regional Internet Registry set up for this, first of all, I think we can handle it within the registry system we have.

But if it had to go that way, we have this wonderful document that’s being discussed left, right and center called ICP-2. And I imagine that if there was a requirement for this and you needed this, you have these five wonderful RIRs that would probably see that within their communities and they would help build something like this.

But that’s really, really far forward. So we’re even set up for that, for crying out loud.

I like this, I would love to see this Policy Proposal rewritten so we can continue to have great discussions here and lead this. And I think this community, ARIN, you folks, you guys could lead this discussion. I think it’s brilliant. Thank you.

Alison Wood: Thank you so much. You guys, your comments were amazing. I appreciate all of it. Thank you.

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Alison, and thank you Nancy.

(Applause.)

All right. Got some jumping to do. All the slides. Come on, you got it. Here we go. Hang with me. All right, Draft Policy number 2026-2, NRPM Section 6.5 Revision. Matt Wilder, come on up, tell us about it.

Draft Policy 2026-2: NRPM Section 6.5 Revision

Matthew Wilder: Thank you, Hollis. I am Matthew Wilder, the shepherd for ARIN 2026-2, and my co-shepherd is the lovely Alicia Trotman, who unfortunately is not here in person. She is virtual. So if you’re online, give a virtual hello to Alicia.

Before I move on to the next slide, I do want to encourage people, there’s a lot of text to this policy, and it’s going to be hard to follow that as I flip through slides. I won’t pause too long. So take a moment if you want to discuss it and be prepared. Google ARIN 2026-2, and pull it up.

Alongside that, I would say, pull up the NRPM Section 6.5. This is basically a rewrite of that section, which is an important one. It has to do with all IPv6 allocations and assignments. So it’s very material.

All right. So our Problem Statement for today for this policy is that we have a section that’s dated, and it has a lot of complexity and maybe can be hard for certain folks to understand if they’re newer to the ARIN world and IP addresses.

What we want to do is – the intent here is to simplify it and to make it approachable and move toward an IPv6 network planning kind of approach.

So there are going to be some similarities but also a lot of changes. So this is again where side by side I would encourage you to look up what exists today in Section 6.5 and side by side compare that with the policy text that I’ll be going through here.

So our Policy Statement. Modify Section 6.5, IPv6 allocations, to simplify this and align with network planning practices. And instead of going with the formula-based approach, we’re going to move toward a utilization and planning-based evaluation model. I’m going to go very quickly through the text because there’s a lot of words, and I think there’s better ways we can use our time. Again, pull up the website to look through the specifics and hone in on what you want to talk about.

So this would be deployed within 12 months. Standard today; it wouldn’t change. But here we go. There you go. Lots and lots and lots of text.

Our history, this is a relatively new one. This came in in May and it became a Draft Policy in June. So, here we are; this is the first ARIN meeting that it’s being presented to.

Here’s the policy impact. How would this actually affect member organizations of ARIN? So the intent is to simplify the rules for IPv6 allocation. And again, rather than this formula-based approach, it moves toward the planning-based approach.

So a network plan would include your IPv6 typical subnet assignment size, a network hierarchy and structure, so you’re giving that topology, and then the projected utilization for one, two, and five years, respectively. One thing we did new for this policy that hasn’t been done previously in policy engagement is we had a survey go out. We asked our survey participants a number of questions. I’m focusing on one of those questions, which is, just in principle, is this policy something that you support?

So set aside the specifics of how it’s worded today, do you support it in principle?

We saw 20 percent neutral and 40 percent in support, 40 percent opposed. So kind of a mixed bag, to be quite frank. General support, though, through the text, we did see that there’s a general support for rewriting Section 6.5.

I would say that based on the responses, I’m uncertain whether the community is supportive of going with this network plan. So I do want to hear from you on that front. And one person pointed out in their survey response: Is ARIN going to be providing a template for this network plan; how do you develop and deploy that? And then also the policy might suggest prefix units for various ISP customer types. Long ago in the NRPM there was a suggestion, /48 is a typical subnet size you might assign to a business customer and then /56 for home. And so on. That’s no longer there. But should we bring that back? That’s another question.

So our questions for you today. Please come up to the microphone and let us know. Does the proposed text address all essential elements of IPv6 allocation policy? Do you want to see ARIN require this kind of network plan, and are you in favor of the policy? So with that…

Hollis Kara: All right, Nancy, if you would like to come up, and microphones are open. So feel free to join the queue and virtual attendees, please type your questions if you’ve got them.

Nancy Carter: Kevin, go ahead.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I support the work you’re doing. We need to make this as easy as possible across the board, and the IPv6 plans were written by people to try to force design choices; /48s, for example, that was taken out. Whether it’s /48, /56, /64, everybody had their best intentions without necessarily understanding the underlying business cases or where the technology would be a decade later.

That is where our policy today sits. It sits in this hemisphere of, it was designed a decade later and it’s far more complicated than it needs to be.

I think you can actually, Matt, drill it down to, there are those that want you to not underserve your business, and there are those that want to make sure you don’t overserve your business. And it’s as simple as that.

A network plan is not needed from ARIN. What is needed is some good guidance in it to say you can do whatever you want, here is some good ideas as to how to do it.

Because ultimately, what we’re finding is people are doing it based on what their tolerance is financially, at the end of the day, not what their tolerance is in reality. Do they need a network plan, if they suddenly come to ARIN for a /16 of IPv6?

Yeah, probably a good idea. Anybody who is a /32 or less at this point, there should be no network plan. It should be good luck, you’ll get your IT person to handle it.

Thank you.

Matthew Wilder: Thank you, Kevin.

Eric Landgraf: Eric Landgraf, Virginia Tech. I’d like to echo broadly what Kevin said. The network plan, I think, puts a burden that already exists on ARIN staff without necessarily solving the real complexity of getting IPv6 deployed for users.

I’d like to see Section 6.5 and 6.8 just merged so that there’s no difference between being an LIR and being an end user, and as Kevin said, just /32 to a /48, have fun. If you want to pay those fees, just take what you want.

Matthew Wilder: Thank you, Eric.

Michael Sinatra: Michael Sinatra, ESnet. Speaking as an employee of ESnet, but not the only one because some of my colleagues probably disagree with me.

We had our first allocation of IPv6 was the first allocation of IPv6 in the ARIN region. It was 27 years and two and a half months ago.

You can imagine that there’s some ossification somewhere in that block that has happened over the years. When that block was originally assigned, it was a /35, I believe. I think all of them were /35s when they first came out. And they were automatically upgraded to /32s.

So the initial addressing plan was for the /35 and then it got expanded to /32. Now what we’re finding is that over the years of doing this as we have expanded our service to other entities, so we’re not just the National Labs anymore, we’re also other parts of DOE, we’re having a little trouble because our sparse allocation is now starting to kind of bump its head.

So where this is all going is I was looking for guidance, for example – I know that Kevin just mentioned we got rid of this /48, I was looking for guidance that said, what should I do? What should I assign to every dam in the Bonneville Power Administration? How big should that block be?

And there really isn’t very much guidance. So if I just say I want to do a /48 to every dam in the Bonneville Power Administration, then I need to actually get more space if I’m going to do that, including every other dam in the TBA and everywhere else, you know?

So essentially what I’m saying is that I’m kind of looking for some guidance about what I need, what, you know, if I just tell you – I guess maybe I should ask this a question. I just tell you, I want to put a /48 at every DOE site and I need more space to do that, will you accept that?

Matthew Wilder: This is a question for staff. So I see John Sweeting heading up to the mic.

John Sweeting: Thanks, John Sweeting, CXO for ARIN. Thanks, Michael. So we have a very good webinar that’s recorded and is available online and it basically walks you through and asks you certain questions about your network, and it recommends when you get to, like, whatever you need for your largest serving site, you put that at every one of your serving site. You don’t try to size each of your serving sites, you find the one that’s going to be the largest you’ll need and you make them all the same.

Okay. It’s really good training. We’ve been using that for a while. The only thing I’ll say about that is it’s really good up to a /32 to /28; but yeah, beyond a /28, we’re going to need network plans just to make sure that you’re doing the right thing and we can help you out.

Michael Sinatra: Okay, that’s really good. Thanks a lot for that. The only other thing I want to say is that I would like it if the policy would relax a little bit the nibble-boundary requirement or at least allow for some exceptions, because we, again, having that very first allocation, we can go up to a /29 if we wanted to but we can’t go to a /28 because someone else is in the way, someone else has a 2001-407.

I would like to be able to keep that block contiguous. That would be very easy for us and for our sites, but if we could have that relaxation, that would be good.

Matthew Wilder: I can beat you to the punch a little bit, John, by saying that my organization I represent had a /32 and the sparse allocation practice of holding that /29. We were able to ask ARIN if we could have that rest of it, and we were.

And I’ll just say on the nibble-boundary, I think there was maybe too much emphasis on that previously for large operators with multiple regions that they may announce from. It’s natural to have some desegregation amongst the large blocks. So I don’t think it should be such of a point of contention to have some relaxation there.

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, ARIN CXO. I was just going to say, Mike, you can check with Misuk out there at our help desk and she can tell you if we can do that for you. Unfortunately, there have been a few cases where we couldn’t on the early adopters.

But as Matt just said, there’s some that we have been able to do that for. So check with Misuk. If we can do that, we will do it for you.

Michael Sinatra: I also want to apologize for my ignorance. I haven’t been to an ARIN meeting in seven years. So if I’m speaking a little bit out of ossified brain, apologies for that.

Matthew Wilder: No, it’s great. Actually, I’ll just say one other thing is, on that point of ARIN’s role in giving guidance, I think I totally agree. So maybe there’s a question of, does that belong in policy, or how do we draw people’s attention to it if it’s not in policy?

I will point out, I think there’s an IPv6 task force at ARIN now and there may be a presentation tomorrow. So maybe some good discussion points ahead.

Uh oh, did I invoke someone to come to the mic.

Lee Howard: You let the cat out of the bag. No. Lee Howard, chair of the IPv6 task force that the Board has formed.

We’re looking for feedback on what ARIN should be doing around IPv6 promotion. Yes, absolutely, so I’ll be introducing that further tomorrow, and I keep looking at policies like this, and this is not a task force-related thing. I keep thinking, this seems like software should be able to develop, to take a look at your network and figure out – surely somebody can vibe code, a network design tool. Not me, not a task force request, not a Board request, just a – I keep thinking that way.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. Michael, welcome back.

(Applause.)

I love what John said because math only maths at a certain way. The /32, you can do anything very easily until the numbers hit 32. You can use these sort of generic assumptions. Once you go larger than /32, it starts to become a little different.

I do have a suggestion for this, and it came out of something that Michael just said.

The more options you give people and the more variation you give people, the more chance for them screwing up and getting the wrong allocation, too small more than too big. Too big, you’ll never notice. You’ll come back 27 years later and say I need something bigger.

But too small and you will notice it. ARIN utilizes sparse allocation. So maybe the solution is everybody that is under a /32 is sparsed a /32 for 10 years. And that maybe is the better way. We’re placeholding that /32 for you worth of it, so that when you do make the bad decision of going with a /44 and you really needed a /40, it’s sparse, and it’s not a complete mistake trying to renumber out of the wrong block or into another block.

If we’re doing sparse allocation, giving a breadcrumb to help, that, A, it’s being done, maybe 10 years is too long, maybe five years whatever, that may be a good thing to have in policy, is the reservation model of that, because it’s being done already.

And one other thing that I have seen other companies do, just a little bit of helpful things for Mike. You could always buy the other holder and then you wouldn’t have to renumber.

(Laughter.)

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. I just wanted to agree with Kevin and Eric’s earlier point.

At a /32, that seems to be a pretty good cutoff technically to determine a requirement for a network plan. Anything smaller than that, I mean, surely the applicant could ask for guidance, but I don’t think the requirement should be there.

Matthew Wilder: Thank you, and noted.

Nancy Carter: Anything online? No.

Hollis Kara: Nothing online.

Nancy Carter: Okay, I guess –

Matthew Wilder: I’m dismissed.

Nancy Carter: – you’re dismissed.

Hollis Kara: Thank you both. (Applause.)

All right, moving right along. Next up we have Draft Policy 2026-3, NRPM Section 6.4.1, Retirement, with E. Marie Brierley. Come on up, E. Marie.

It’s going to be the green button.

Draft Policy 2026-3: NRPM Section 6.4.1 Retirement

E. Marie Brierley: Hey, everyone. E. Marie Brierley. As she said, the E is not silent. Gentle reminder.

So I want to thank my co-shepherd, Gerry, the inimitable Gerry George. The NRPM, I wouldn’t want to use the other word for it, Section 6.4.1, Retirement.

So the Problem Statement is that – I’m going to go ahead and read it just because it’s pretty short.

So “the current NRPM Section 6.4.1 contains language referring to property rights of IPv6 direct allocations made by ARIN. Past references to any rights on IP resources was defined in legacy versions of the Resource Services Agreement between entity.”

Hollis Kara: They can’t pick you up on there, so if you want to use that

E. Marie Brierley: I’m usually kind of loud. So there we go.

“Any mention of property or other rights do not belong in the Number Resource Policy Manual. This should be referenced in the Registration Services Agreement. Section 6 of the NRPM was modeled on a framework the other RIRs added to their policy manuals going back as far as 2004.”

I love short Policy Statements.

Address space not to be considered property.

So the proposal is to remove this original text altogether and retire it.

This is a new policy, obviously. The proposal came in in June, and we moved it to Draft Policy in July. This is the first time the community has had an opportunity to review it.

This policy will achieve parity in the NRPM between IPv4 and IPv6. The terms of IP address ownership are incorporated in the member RSA.

As of this morning, there was nothing on the PPML. So please come to the mics and say something. Kevin. (Laughter.) Don’t leave me hanging, Kevin.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. Since I got called out.

I support this policy, how is that? In fact, I would love for you to continue on and remove out anything that conflicts with the RSA.

Ultimately, the RSA takes precedence over the NRPM. It is the document that the resource holders sign; contractually are obligated. That’s the one that matters. Yes, NRPM is incredible guidance.

But if there’s something that conflicts or is not appropriate, remove it.

So this is a great example, and if there’s others, maybe it’s a good time to ask Staff and Legal during this process not just about this one, but if there’s anything else, because I will support that as well.

If it’s in this document and not only is not effectual or not useful and conflicts with the RSA, leaving it there is making it confusing. And that’s not helpful for anybody.

E. Marie Brierley: Thank you.

Michael Sinatra: Michael from ESnet. This Policy Proposal aligns now IPv6 with IPv4, correct?

E. Marie Brierley: Yes. There’s no mention of property rights associated to IPv4 in NRPM.

Michael Sinatra: I think that’s been retired. Okay. So yeah, I support the policy because of that alignment. I would like to see that alignment happen. It also frees me from having to be pedantic and correct people whenever they say “We own this prefix, can you route it for us?” I say, “Well, technically you don’t own it.” I don’t have to say that anymore. So I do support the policy.

E. Marie Brierley: We’re here for you. Anyone else?

Ashley Perks: No questions online.

E. Marie Brierley: Okay. Question.

Hollis Kara: Do we have one more?

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. I’m just concerned of the implications of this change, in terms of, does this now explicitly allow private ownership of network address space, or is it simply a requirement to – and I would like staff and counsel guidance on that matter.

Hollis Kara: Said the magic word, Scott.

John Curran: John Curran, CEO, ARIN. When you sign an RSA to get address space from ARIN, there’s a section, Section 2, that sort of says what you get and it says you get a certain set of rights associated with an entry in the ARIN database.

And that bundle of rights and services is what you get when you sign the RSA. We’ve actually, in the past, had RSAs that say a whole bunch of other things about rights, that they’re not property. They’re not this, they’re not that. That was Section 7.

And that was in RSA for both legacy and standard RSA and caused some people heartburns, because they had to disclaim what an IP address block was, and we realized we really didn’t have to address that. We just had to say, if we’re issuing you, as part of this RSA, addresses, we can tell you exactly what that is. It’s a set of rights associated with the entry in ARIN’s database.

If all you’re doing is bringing the addresses you have in, we’ll tell you how we’re going to treat them. We don’t ask you to disclaim anything anymore. We struck that section out.

I will say, for a practical basis, when you have an address block, what you have is a set of rights that we recognize to an entry into ARIN’s database.

You may recognize it as something else. You could find someone on the street and say I want to sell you my address block, and you can say great. If you’re not transferring the exclusive right to be associated with the entry in the database that we run, I don’t know what you’re selling them. You might be selling them swampland or a bridge, too.

But the right to be associated with a particular entry in our database is absolutely clear, and it’s what we recognize when we issue address space or when a legacy holder comes in and asks for normalization of their relationship with us.

That contractual right, that bundle, it’s a contractual right. And I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a lawyer. Let me say that again. But I will tell you that that contractual right can move around.

Companies buy and sell things, contracts move, the rights transfer. There’s estates. People pass away. There’s probate. There’s bankruptcies. And a contractual right moves according to well-defined things.

When someone says is IP addresses property or not property. Not property. I’m like, look, it’s a contractual right.

And under some circumstances, it’s an asset of an estate. It moves. It’s treated as property. It’s valued as property. If you tell me you think it’s property like a piece of land you hold freely and innately, independent of any contract, I will tell you good luck with that. Okay. Does that answer your question?

Scott Johnson: Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Hollis Kara: All right, thank you, E. Marie. Thank you, Nancy.

All right. Let’s keep rolling. We’ve got Draft Policy 2026-4, Harmonize Section 1 and Section 6, Principles and Goals Statements, with my good friend, Brian Jones, from Virginia Tech.

Draft Policy 2026-4: Harmonize Section 1 and Section 6, Principles and Goals Statements

Brian Jones: Kaitlyn Pellak and I are the shepherds of this Draft Policy. It’s to harmonize Section 1 and Section 6, Principles and Goals Statements.

I’ll warn you ahead of time, there’s a whole lot of slides in this, so I’m not going to read them all. But I will read this part.

There’s two main sections of the Number Resource Policy Manual that discuss principles and goals. One in Section 1 and the other is Section 6. Similar language in Section 4 is already retired.

Given the history of these two sections, there’s multiple redundancies and incongruities in their language. This proposal seeks to clarify the language of both sections in order to better communicate ARIN’s principles and goals.

This bottom part’s important to remember. It’s not really making any policy substantial changes. Just to clarify language and remove a lot of duplication.

So I’ll let you read through the original text. There’s quite a bit here. I do have some red line version on down.

Okay. This was the proposal text. This is not the redlined version. I’m not going to read all this. But this updates Sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4, kind of refactors the original language.

This 1.2 section, language from 6.3.5 got integrated into this section.

Routability in 1.3 did stand alone. The language from 6.3.4, scalability, was moved into this section. This was removing language and moving to new sections. Okay.

This is add two new sections. In Section 1, for fairness and conflict of goals, both of these existed in Section 6, 6.3, 6.3.7 before.

Remove 6.3.2 and 6.3.3 as redundant to 1.1 and 1.2, Now. 6.3.2 will be retired. 6.3.3 will be retired. And 6.3.4 will be modified to move the more generic language to 1.3 while keeping the IPv6-specific language in that section.

This removes 6.3.8 as redundant to 1.6.

This now calls out the specific priority of conflicting goals. So 6.3.8 will be retired.

Okay. This is the red line changes. So you can see what parts are getting removed. The pieces that – with strike-throughs are being removed, and red lettering that’s not stricken through is being added or modified.

This is Section 1.3, scalability was added into 1.3, along with the routability pieces.

Stewardship, quite a bit of this was stricken out. And this is new sections added to Section 1 for fairness and conflict of goals, which existed at least partially in Section 6 before.

This is a fairly new proposal. Came in in July. Became a Draft Policy in August. Staff and Legal Review: Shout out to the Staff and Legal team. Got this in past the deadline to get it done by this meeting, but they were able to get it done. I appreciate that, and they did point out some things we need to do.

IPv6 policies were written as globally coordinated policies with other regions and ratified into ARIN’s Number Resource Policy Manual in Section 6, IPv6.

Staff understands this Draft Policy intends to clarify multiple redundancies and incongruities that exist between Section 6 and Section 1, Principles and Goals of the American Registry for Internet Numbers.

And staff understands Draft Policy is not intended to make any meaningful changes to these goals and principles, but to clarify their language and remove duplication.

Staff acknowledges updates to Section 1 and Section 6, primarily consolidating duplicative text and retirement of several subsections and the additions of subsections 1.5 and 1.6.

It’s pointed out that the proposed new Section 1.5 mirrors the current Section 6.3.6; however, the reference of “regardless to their location, nationality, size, or any other factor,” seems to be extraneous language that could be removed from the proposal in Section 1.5.

This qualifier could be distracting and its removal leaves the language more straightforward.

It’s got the new way that would read without that.

Fairness is not a definition or justification requirement. It’s worth noting that ARIN currently implements all policies and practices relating to the use of public address space fairly and impartially to all existing and potential members of the Internet community participating in the ARIN region.

And, yeah, we need to probably retire 6.3.5 and 6.3.6 because it was incorporated in Section 1.

Editorial in nature. Draft policies must be reviewed independently. It’s worth noting that community discussion around Recommended Draft Policy ARIN 2025-1, Clarify ISP and LIR Definitions and References to Address Ambiguity in the Number Resource Policy Manual text has led to the preference of the term “LIR” rather than “ISP.” So we need to change that in Section 1.3.

Internet should be capitalized. We need to do that. Aggregation should not be capitalized. We need to do that.

So it’s implementable as written. No major impacts. No material legal impact. Agrees with Staff and Legal understanding of fairness in Section 1.5.

Implementation timeframe, three months. Staff training, updates to public documentation, updates to internal procedures and guidelines.

The impact really is to make this all clear and not be duplicating efforts in two different sections of the Number Resource Policy Manual.

There hasn’t been any community feedback. So looking forward to some feedback here today.

So does the consolidation and rewording of these sections, along with retirement of several redundant sections of the Number Resource Policy Manual, clarify the principles and goals contained therein?

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Brian. Nancy. Please, microphones are open. If you have comments or questions, please approach the mics. If you are on with us online, start typing.

Eric Landgraf: Eric Landgraf, Virginia Tech. One concern I have is that that new Section 1.5, fairness, the current language, is there a way that that could conflict with how we have policies for Section 4.4 and 4.10 being unfair in some sort of nebulous way because they’re focused on specific categories of users?

Brian Jones: I’m not sure. According to the Staff and Legal, it seems like it’s just extraneous language.

Eric Landgraf: Other than that, I believe I support just getting that stuff out of Section 6 and into Section 1.

Brian Jones: Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Kevin.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I support the idea of what you’re trying to do here. But – the but. I’m going to channel some ghosts of ARIN past.

All of these sections have much deeper meaning, especially when people come up to the mic and start quoting them verbatim to say that conservation in Section 6 says X, we will only do policy based on.

This is not a notice to reader outside of the NRPM. This is content inside of the NRPM. To many people over the years, this content has very strong meaning.

Conservation is just an easy one. You take it out of Section 6 and you commingle it with IPv4 and it’s a very different ballgame. So the question is, how much of the stuff that we’re talking here would staff consider to have effect?

And if staff doesn’t consider it to have effect, that’s fine, but then does the community believe it has impact to policy and policy direction? And if it doesn’t, then, yes, by all means remove it out.

But this is butterfly stuff where you step on the butterfly. I sort of wonder, you remove out conservation, are you removing out a lot more than just some idle informational stuff that may come back to us? So I don’t know the answer to that, and that’s why I mention it.

Brian Jones: Good point. Thank you.

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, CXO with ARIN. So Kevin, that Section 1 is not IPv4-specific. It’s overall to all the Number Resources that we manage.

It’s actually what’s in Section 6 that contradicts with Section 1, there’s contradictions and incongruities and duplicity, which is what they’re trying to remove.

So anything that was captured in 6 – that’s what we should be making sure that nothing got dropped on the floor and it does make it into those Section 1 rewrites. So that’s good input for Brian and the AC.

Kevin Blumberg: Yeah, I absolutely get that. It’s Section 1 and Section 6 when it comes to how you then look at and put your litmus test on IPv4 versus IPv6 versus ASNs. And they’re very different beasts. I really hope that we’re not pushing conservation when you’ve got a septillion in a /48.

We don’t need to be talking about conservation in the slightest way in the same idea.

Nancy Carter: Kaitlyn.

Kaitlyn Pellak: Kaitlyn, actually speaking entirely in my personal capacity as a word nerd here. To Eric’s point about fairness, I’m genuinely asking, would “equitable” be a better term here, and that’s to ARIN staff and to anybody in the room.

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, CXO. We’d have to really look at that a little deeper. I can’t off the top of my head say that “equitable” is better than “fairness” without looking at what that would do to the whole thing. Is that okay, Kaitlyn?

I just said we would have to look at that deeper with the Staff and Legal.

Kaitlyn Pellak: Absolutely.

Nancy Carter: Thanks, John. Go ahead.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, speaking for myself. To use an analogy of maintaining a codebase. Some of the most efficient and effective use of the time done, applied to that task, is often eliminating replicative code or taking things and functionalizing them, so you make function calls and generally removing lines of code from that application. And I think that’s kind of what’s happening here.

Not speaking directly to the policy, but it seems to me that if there are no other implications that brought up – Kevin pointed out some potential ones –but if there are no other implications brought up, it does make sense to move forward with this kind of change.

Brian Jones: Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Anything online, Ashley?

Ashley Perks: We do not.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

Hollis Kara: All right. I think that’s everything. Thank you, Nancy and Brian. (Applause.)

This has been a bit of a marathon, and because I’m a kind person, we’re going to go to break. I need to let some of my staff have a little bit of a break as well. So we’ll see you back at 3:30. Uh oh. What do you need, John?

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, ARIN CXO. I just want to mention that the elections opened at 3:00. So they’ve been open for 11, 12 minutes now. I just want to make sure everybody knows that.

We were planning to have our Board elections officer talk before they opened, but it doesn’t matter. He’s still going to talk. I just want to let you know they’re already open. Yes, for those who like to vote early and often.

Hollis Kara: If you are a voting contact for ARIN, you should be able to log in and see that Vote Now button available to you. Yes, after the break, we will have our last policy. Ron will open the elections officially, and we’ll be off to the races. We’ll finish the rest of the day, and please, go pick up your T-shirts. Have a break. Run by the bathroom, get a drink, caffeinate, whatever you need to do.

If you have a guest coming to the social and you’ve not yet paid, please stop by registration and take care of that while you can.

See you at 3:30.

(Break)

Hollis Kara: That was a quick 20 minutes. Is everybody back? We’re back. We’re in the final push. We’re going have our last policy discussion, open our elections, and then we’ve got a couple of presentations from the NRO NC, and then from staff on the status of the RIR Governance Document. We’re going to finish up the day with an Open Microphone and get you out of here in time to join us on the social buses at 6:30 to head over to the Ball & Chain.

Sound like a plan? Sounds like a plan.

Okay. That’s what we’re doing. We’re on it. Draft Policy 2026-5. I’m getting tired, y’all. Define Out-of-Region Use. Gus, come on up. Please save me.

(Applause.)

Draft Policy 2026-5: Define Out Of Region Use

Gus Reese: Welcome, everybody. Last policy. Welcome, everybody, last policy. Sorry about that.

Okay. So I am the shepherd or primary shepherd of Draft Policy 2026-5, giving a definition to Out-of-Region Use, which has been a popular topic lately.

I’ll give a brief overview of the Problem Statement here. Out-of-Region Use. “Section 9, the Out-of-Region Use sets requirements for the use case and the treatment of space used as such for future justifications, but does not include a definition of the term there.

“As such, there have been recurring concerns from the community that simultaneous use of resources inside and outside the ARIN region, such as Anycast or geographically diverse use cases there, may be included with staff’s interpretation of Out-of-Region Use, which does not appear to be intended.”

So this proposal is intended to address that concern.

And the Policy Statement. “The sole use of ARIN allocated resources in locations outside of the ARIN service region.”

“The definition does not apply to the simultaneous use of a given ARIN resource in both” –is that right – yeah, “ARIN resource, both within the ARIN service region and other RIR service regions.” There.

Here’s the history. It came to us in August of this year. And it was accepted by the AC as a Draft Policy last month in September. And unfortunately, because it was adopted so late in September, there was no time for Staff and Legal on this one.

And here is the impact. It’s pretty simple. This policy would add a definition as to what is considered out of[region] use of ARIN rumber resources there.

The feedback so far. So after this was accepted, I did send this to the PPML. And so far I have received three responses back from the community, and they have all been in the affirmative of supporting this policy as it is written.

So my question to you folks in the community here today and online is, does this policy add clarity to out-of-region use? And are you in favor of the policy?

Hollis Kara: All right. With that, the microphones are open. So come on down. Online, please start typing. And Nancy, I see you’re on stage. So the queues are yours.

Nancy Carter: Kevin, please go ahead.

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire.

I support the work you’re doing here. Couple things. You used the word “simultaneous use” instead of “Anycast,” and I realize that’s probably to get rid of the term “Anycast” because it’s a technical term. But to the best of my knowledge, “Anycast” is the only logical simultaneous, and simultaneous may get abused. So just caution on that one.

As an example, I don’t know if proxy services is considered or could be construed as simultaneous use that’s being used in region and out of region. It’s mostly out of region, but it sort of looks in region. So words do matter with that kind of stuff, especially when it comes to abuse. And that’s, I think, the key issue with Out-of-Region Use, and you specifying it.

The most important part for me for Out-of-Region Use is we are a Regional Internet Registry. Out of region is meant to be a limited component of your holdings, not the, “We are the easiest place to get IPs, therefore…”

And I think that is the key thing that needs to be in it. How you then say out of region is acceptable, that’s perfectly fine, but if that’s missing from it, we keep going back to the fact that everybody wants to treat us as the global RIR, rather than what we are, which is a regional.

Thank you.

John Stitt: John Stitt, Hopkinsville Electric System energynet. I support this policy as written.

And to the comment about how it may be acceptable in Section 9 itself, I think the proposed placing in the definition section is the proper place for this. Thank you.

Chris Woodfield: Chris Woodfield, Woodfield.tech, and ARIN AC. To the question of simultaneous use, Anycast is not entirely the only use case for this.

I’ve seen plenty of redundancy models where you’re not necessarily using the addresses exactly at the same time, but you have the ability to move the same addressing from one place to another.

I wouldn’t call that Anycast, but would also consider that in scope for the use case of this policy.

To the question of whether or not we are the global provider, people have to get their addresses from somewhere. And Anycast is a valid – it is a very heavily used network technology or use of network technology, but those addresses had to come from some RIR. There’s no RIR just for Anycast or simultaneous use.

I think this policy is relevant in our policy and probably similar definitions should probably be in other RIR policies as well.

Kevin Blumberg: Sorry, can I just – I wanted to respond to that one. Kevin Blumberg, The Wire – since it came up from my – I am in Miami. I fly to Amsterdam. I’m not simultaneously in both places. Disaster recovery is not simultaneous.

I understand, and I’m not saying – Chris, I want Anycast – that’s not a problem. Simultaneous is a new concept, a new term, and it’s undefinable, in my mind. That’s my bigger concern.

I’d like you to work on it and see what you come up with.

Nancy Carter: Thanks for that, Kevin. Go ahead.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets.

Consider the case where, say I have an ARIN allocated /44 or /22, for example, and I decide to open a branch office in Brussels and I point a /48 there or a /24 there, how does this policy impact that?

Gus Reese: Well, you would be using – I think that probably has to go back to, are you coming back for more resources and are you going to be using this as justification?

John Sweeting: John Sweeting, CXO at ARIN. Scott, that’s kind of a trick question. Could you kind of make it more clear? What are you going to do?

Scott Johnson: So, okay, I have a /44. I have the majority of that deployed in the ARIN region. But I’m making a new expansion, hypothetically, and I need to number a branch office in Europe somewhere or Africa or inside another region’s territory. Can I use a fraction of my space, and does that become simultaneous? Again, I’m speaking to the ambiguity of simultaneous.

John Sweeting: No, it’s just Out-of-Region Use, which is okay.

Scott Johnson: Okay. Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Thanks, John. Anything online?

Hollis Kara: Nothing online.

Nancy Carter: Got what you needed?

Gus Reese: I got it.

Nancy Carter: Thank you.

Hollis Kara: Anybody have anything else? (No response.)

All right. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Good job, folks. You made it through our policy marathon.

Next up, discussion of the 2026 ARIN Elections. Inviting Ron da Silva, from ARIN’s Board of Trustees and this year’s election officer.

2026 ARIN Elections

Ron da Silva: As John said, the polls opened at 3:00. So good luck, thanks.

(Applause.) (Laughter.)

I wish. I do have slides I was asked to go through. I will do that. Hopefully this will inform the process.

Yes, I am Ron da Silva, member of the Board and also this year’s election officer. So let me talk about the election that has just started.

Look, that’s the same slide just in different colors. And somebody is calling me as I’m presenting. Cute.

Okay. Yes, voting has opened. It opened at 3:00. It closes next Friday at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. So make sure, if you’re not sitting there now voting, that you do it sometime between now and next Friday.

Let me talk about some details. First, very important, the process to vote should include getting to know your candidates. And there’s a lot of information available for you to do that. First, their bios are online. Their answers to the questionnaire is online.

The statements they’ve made or statements you’ve made or statements you want to read other people made are available to talk about the candidates.

They have made individual speeches, links to those recordings are online, and lastly, there was a candidate forum, number of you were probably there, and a number of you were probably busy doing something else. Fortunately, it’s recorded. Click on the link. You can also digest that.

All that information should give you a sense of the candidates for the Board and the AC.

So how do you do that? First, you have to be the voting contact for a member organization. So a member organization has to be in good standing. What does that mean? You paid your bills as of September 7th. And had designated somebody to be with an email address to be your voting contact. Roughly 2400 members have done that around the September 7th timeframe.

If you had changes to your voting email address, your voting contact, you were able to make that update up until last week. So if the person who is your voting contact happened to have left between last week and this week and you can’t get access to the email address, too bad. Hopefully you have a way to fix that.

But anyway, moving on. Let’s talk about the ARIN membership population. So we have roughly 26,000 members.

If you recall, a number of years ago, we decided to create this general member classification, which basically says that you are interested in what’s happening here and you will participate in our election processes.

There are 2400 members that have elected to participate. What I love seeing in this data, when staff pulled it together, there are 700 new members, not necessarily new members from outside of the organization, but new members that previously didn’t participate were convinced that this is really important, and they are now signed up with voting contacts to participate. So welcome, glad to have them.

But in contrast, part of the policy as a committed voting member is you have to participate. You say you want to participate. Well, you have to follow through and do something.

If after three years you haven’t participated at all, simply by maybe voting in one of the election cycles, you will be degraded from a voting member to a regular member.

So 700 or so of you that are out there that are voting members that didn’t participate last year or the year before, please participate this year, otherwise you will be purged. Well, not purged, but downgraded.

(Laughter.)

Anyway, so like I said, 2400. There were some number that were either – they had some bills outstanding or didn’t bother to put in an email address for their voting contact. Don’t ask me why. But that is the data.

Also, some interesting data. So roughly 2400 eligible votes. Just under 1900 of those are represented by a single voting contact. So a single email address maps to a single vote.

It’s important to realize that in the room and online and in our community, perhaps not even paying attention today, we have voting contacts that vote on behalf of several organizations, or several memberships.

There are roughly 150 or so voting contacts that represent two to five organizations.

There are nine that represent six to 15, and there are a couple that are 15-plus. Now, this can be a voting contact that works for a company that has many, many accounts and they’re representing all those accounts on behalf of the organization.

It could be a voting contact that works for an organization that, maybe through mergers and acquisitions, has several companies that belong to the same company but perhaps haven’t been fully integrated yet, so they’re now representing not just the interests of their employer, but possibly other companies that are wholly-owned, recently acquired, maybe not fully integrated, or separately managed for other purposes.

And lastly, there could be voting contacts here that are representing the interests of unaffiliated different organizations, perhaps they represent the interests of those organizations here in ARIN’s contacts and maybe provide some general services, advice, IT, so they can represent a variety of interests.

So interesting distribution of votes. You can start accessing it 30 minutes ago. 45 minutes ago. And it looks like this.

So you can see sample ballot up here on the screen on the left – on the right, and on this –when you log in, it will show – you probably can’t read this, but in bold is your name, and then the list of companies that you have voting rights for, and then below it all the candidates.

Also the email address that you used to log in, hopefully you didn’t forget it in the couple seconds this rendered. That is also the email address that you’ll receive confirmation after the process of your voting.

Now, this is always a fun part. The Board has continued to challenge to communicate what we feel is important, what is valuable in the overall composition of the Board. We normally do that through this Board Guidance Letter that is included.

If you’ve forgotten what’s in there, it’s in the ARIN election website, a link to it, or on the Board of Trustees page off of the main ARIN page. I forget where it is, honestly. But it’s there. And it shares a message that we revisit every year to try to inform you on what the current Board feels is important.

And two things that we put in there this year is strength in finances. It’s important that all Board members, you see this in the job description, have some financial literacy. They know how to read a balance sheet. They know what cash flow means. They know what our investment portfolio looks like. But it’s also valuable, we feel, that we have in the mix, not everybody, but in the mix of the Board composition, someone with more in-depth experience in the finance industry. So that could be a CPA as listed here, or it could be a prior CFO, or just somebody who spent a significant amount of time becoming an expert as a finance individual.

And then secondly, we put in this vague term of Executive Personal Oversight, Management and Planning. What does that mean? I don’t know. What we meant by that was that one of the things that the Board does is it is responsible for managing this guy.

I was pointing to John, for those who are perhaps listening and not watching. So CEO and executive compensation, maybe prior experience in a compensation committee, familiarity with CEO succession planning and everything that goes with that responsibility of a Board director. So that’s important for the entire Board to have, but then specifically, we’re looking for candidates or people returning to the Board that have those particular skills as important to the overall composition. All right. Does that make sense? I’m going to give you a chance to ask questions later, if you have any.

Back to your ballot. Here you’ll see there’s all the candidates. This is funny, there are not – what is that, eight – there are not nine candidates on your ballot. There are four. This is illustrative, not actual. You can pick up to three, and then similarly there’s a bunch of candidates down below for the Advisory Council. You can pick up the five. But missing is the NRO. Talk about that in a minute.

You can pick less, but I don’t know, I’d encourage you to pick at least three or at least five. Probably not more than three or more than five, but definitely not less. Make your vote count.

After you make your selections, it will present your summary back to you so you can click on yes, I really did mean this, or there’s a blue button that says nope I changed my mind when I go back and change it. Then lastly, you’ll get an email that says, hey, you did stuff. Cool. So know the candidates. I got confused by this because there are two different ways to get to the same information. You can go to ARIN-elections.net or ARIN.net/elections, or something like that. Right? They both kind of get you to the same material.

And there are videos there. We’re not actually playing these, are we?

Hollis Kara: We’re playing the little snippet videos where everybody gets to say what their name is. So we’re ready to go to the video. You ready? Okay. These are just intros. It’s quick. I promise.

Dan Alexander: Hello, I’m Dan Alexander. I am a director of engineering at Comcast, and I am running for the Board of Trustees.

Kevin Blumberg: Hello, my name is Kevin Blumberg, and I’m from The Wire Inc. and I’m running for the ARIN Board of Trustees. Thank you.

Catherine Middleton: I’m Catherine Middleton from Toronto Metropolitan University, and I’m running for the Board of Trustees.

Tina Morris: Hi, my name is Tina Morris. I’m running for the ARIN Board of Trustees. My primary affiliation is Amazon Web Services where I work as a senior manager.

Doug Camin: I’m Doug Camin with Cortland County, New York, and I am running for the Advisory Council.

Elizabeth Goodson: I’m Elizabeth Goodson with Lightpath Fiber. I’m a candidate for the Advisory Council.

Altie Jackson: My name is Altie Jackson, and I am your candidate for Advisory Council 2026.

Evghenii Kosatii: Hi, my name is Evghenii Kosatii. I work for Addrex, and I am running for the ARIN Advisory Council. Thank you.

Kaitlyn Pellak: My name is Kaitlyn Pellak. I’m affiliated with Amazon Web Services, Amazon, and I’m running for the ARIN Advisory Council.

Leif Sawyer: Hello. My name is Leif Sawyer. I’m with GCI Communications in Anchorage Alaska, and I’m running for the ARIN Advisory Council.

Matthew Wilder: Matthew Wilder with TELUS Communications in Canada, and I’m running for the Advisory Council.

Ron da Silva: It’s nicer when the lights are down.

So noted is the lack of an NRO election this time around. Why? Well, every year we have an election, or a selection. So every third year the Board gets to pick from the candidate pool. And this is one of those years.

So yesterday, in a galaxy far, far away, the Board met to have deliberations on selecting a candidate, and with a new hope would like to offer the resolution from the Board and congratulate Kat Hunter.

(Applause.)

So earlier, John Sweeting rambled a little bit about, as Kat, you were saying goodbye to everybody in your capacity as chair, that there’s a bunch of us in the room that were prior AC chairs. I took a similar path. I was on the NRO after being chair of the AC, and I think several of the other chairs have done the same thing. And then from there, I went to the ICANN board for half a dozen years. And then glad to be back here in the ARIN community on the Board of ARIN.

So John was suggesting you’ve got a long sentence – I mean, a long path ahead of you.

(Laughter.)

And may the force be with you. Congrats,Kat.

For clarity, Kevin is the NRO appointee until the end of the year and Kat will take over at the beginning of the year. So that is not effective immediately. Transition happens at the end which, therefore, doesn’t impact the information in front of you in the election headquarters. So go to ARIN.net/elections. See, I told you it was there. Or ARIN-elections/net, or whatever it is.

Hollis Kara: So there are actually two sites, sorry, one. Is the election headquarters that is on the main ARIN website and the other is the election site, which is where we’ve stored most of things because we can’t support Statements of Support on ARIN.net, which is more than you need to ask, but you looked at me, so I’m talking. Now I’m going to stop.

Ron da Silva: Does it work that way?

Hollis Kara: Not always, Ron. Nice try.

Ron da Silva: Thank you, Hollis. If you have questions, I’ll open in a minute if you want to ask anything of the Board. And if you want to ask anything of the organization, you can use the email address or go harass the services desk that’s awaiting out there for you to come say hello. Go vote. Any questions?

Hollis Kara: If anybody has a question for Ron, please approach the mic.

Ron da Silva: Lee, your can’t ask questions

Lee Howard: I’m not asking questions

Hollis Kara: Or commenting

Lee Howard: I’m commenting because I do want to encourage everyone to vote. I want to encourage Service Members to convert to General Members next year. The votes really count. The difference between being seated in one of these positions and not being seated often comes down to 10 votes or fewer. It’s often within 5 percent. They can be very close elections. So just having one or two more people vote can make a difference in the outcome.

Ron da Silva: I think even more importantly, the more we have our membership involved in the governance, in the decisions of the Board, I mean, of the organization, it protects our election process. It protects the integrity of our Board members and how we place people and ensure we’re not captured and all these kind of things.

So 100 percent what Lee said, please participate. You 600 or so that I called out that are at risk, don’t get dropped. Participate. 700 new ones, thank you for signing up. Please participate.

And, yeah, thanks. Good luck to all the candidates.

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Ron. (Applause.)

All right. With that, we’re on to our ASO AC/NRO NC report with Kevin Blumberg for his last time.

ASO AC Update

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. First-time speaker.

(Laughter.)

So I actually have 15 minutes to talk about the ASO. And in many ARIN meetings over the years, that 15 minutes has been 10 minutes, five minutes, three minutes — Kevin, get up and go. So I’m very happy to be able to do that because over the years, I’ve managed to do a number of talks as a mentor towards the Fellows and realized that people really don’t understand who or what we are or what we do. And there’s a lot of complexity to it that really shouldn’t be there. It’s actually very simple.

So when I do my talks in front of the Fellows, I say, close your eyes and stop — I’m not putting slides up. But today I’ll put some slides up for you.

And the first thing I’m going to talk about is ASO. What is the ASO AC? The ASO AC, if anybody here is a math nerd, equals-equals the NRO NC fundamentally. It’s the same name. In the ICANN space, where we meet, we are called the ASO AC. And we have an MoU with them and a specific set of tasks that we are asked to do.

But inside of ARIN, or inside of the RIRs, we are the NRO NC. It’s the same group of people. It’s the same function. It’s just which direction you look at, whether it’s the ICANN direction or the RIR direction.

There are 15 members, three from each region. As of about a month ago, for the first time in a couple of years, we are fully staffed. There are 15 members, three from every region. Two are elected, one is appointed. You just heard that. Congratulations, Kat.

It’s a different world. And we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But it is a great place to participate in, and it has been.

There are — two elected in our region are for three-year terms, and the appointed is a three-year term. The other regions do things similar. Sometimes the terms are a little different. They may only appoint yearly, as an example, et cetera. But the idea is the same. Each region has a uniqueness to it, but they’re the same.

So what do we do? We do global policy. Would anybody like to guess the last time the ASO did a global policy? Would you like to guess? Twelve, I believe. It was 12 years ago.

We are constantly watching, and this is an important part of what we do. We watch. We make sure, is their global policy, is it actually a global policy? Do we need to participate in the process, et cetera? So there’s a constant look at, is global policy being discussed? And we’ll talk about what global policy is.

We advise the ICANN Board when asked. That’s the key, “when asked.” We appoint two members to the ICANN Board. And recently that was actually very difficult because a long-term participant in the ICANN community passed away while he was serving, Alan Barrett, on the ICANN Board, and we were asked to find another candidate to fill his position.

But I wanted to call out, because Alan’s commitment to the ASO and to our communities as a whole is something people in the ARIN region may not know very much about, but it is deeply felt around the world. And we also appoint somebody to the ICANN NomCom. They’re the ones who also will put people on the Board.

So, these are our direct requirements. And we’re going to talk about things that sometimes come up anyway, not just that list. We meet virtually.

Let’s go on. And you can see the full list of people here. I love the grayscale, by the way. We meet virtually once a month. And — we meet virtually once a month, and those calls are open. You’re welcome to listen in. And we do that. We have other mailing lists, et cetera.

So a moment ago I talked about things we may get asked to do. And in, was it 2023, August or September, we were asked by the NRO EC; who are the NRO EC? They’re the five presidents of their individual RIRs. We were asked by them to do two things. One, to review a document on the technical operations of being an RIR and provide some feedback, which we did.

And the second was to look at this document called ICP-2. Internet Coordination Policy dash 2. And, yes, there is a 1 and there is a 3. It was a document that was written inside of ICANN space. Very similar to the Number Resource Policy Manual. It’s a document that sort of talks about what is it to become an RIR. That is what ICP-2 is. It was written in 1999.

And it was a, what I would call, a wedding-vows document in that it talked about all the great things that it is to be an RIR and how you became an RIR. But it never talked about, implicitly in the document — I’m sorry, explicitly in the document — the things that were needed ongoing, or if an RIR was unable to function, what would come. So there was no lifecycle in that document.

The document was a very positive, go back 27-year-type document — but it didn’t really have that. And we were asked to look at ICP-2, and through community consultation, through our work with stakeholders, through our own discussions — because 15 people from all over the world — to come up with a new document.

And we started out with just a set of questions, principles. Because you go straight to the words and everybody focuses on individual words. They don’t actually focus on what’s important.

So we started with a consultation about principles. We then moved into multiple drafts, et cetera. And we finalized it. Even the name of the document was difficult. Do we call it — ICP-2.biz was something that we talked about at the very beginning, for all the dial-up people who like those types of standards. And that was not a healthy name.

So the Governance Document for the Recognition, Operation, and Derecognition of Regional Internet Registries came about.

So we’ll go through a little bit of the final changes and things that have happened there.

And lastly, as I said, we needed to find a replacement for Alan, and Oscar Robles has taken over for the next year. And we’ve now started the process for the next seat, again.

As I said, Oscar has now taken over from Alan. The mailing lists are open, and we have our monthly call. We do get observers, more so with ICP-2. Sometimes it’s three to five people, sometimes it’s 10 or 15. It’s great for our region, having a call at 7:00 in the morning. If you’re West Coast, you’ll really enjoy it. But by all means, please come, and there’s full minutes of them as well.

So let’s talk about ICP-2 a little bit more. As I talked about earlier, it’s gone through a lot, and there’s been a lot of things. I’m not going to go through every single consultation, et cetera. But where we are at today, we have published, as of September 1, our final draft that we provided to the NRO EC. And then we’ve created a rationale and redline version.

So what does that mean? Again, we’ve gone through multiple iterations, and what’s really important here is — I’m going to leave this up here for a minute, I’m going to talk about it — a lot of people gave phenomenal feedback to us during this process. I’m not being flippant when I say thousands of hours, cumulatively, of time went into reviewing and looking at that feedback. In some cases, we had 650 full-on responses that were hundreds of words length on specific topics, from individuals, from no-name people, from luminaries in the Internet. All of them contributed to this, and we took all of that information in.

A lot of the information comes down to looking at all of the stakeholders and what the document is and what our abilities are, and taking out things that may not be in scope of what we needed to do — which is not a technical document; it’s a governance document, not a technical document — and to put in the things that will last for the next review, hopefully in less than 25 years.

But we really had to take all of the stakeholders there. When you have global, not an individual region — we’ve heard today all the policy discussions here. That’s a lot of work. And we are hoping that through the process — people are accepting of it. So far the feedback has been very positive.

But we understand there are going to be areas that people wanted to see more. In some cases they wanted to see less. And we are hoping as a body we balanced. So this is the part where I was talking about, about Kat. I am coming up on my 10th year, and I’m done. I gave my notification to the Board in March that it was time for new people. Now, 10 years is weird, if it’s a three-year term. I replaced John Sweeting, who replaced Ron da Silva, because there are some requirements. There’s a very limited set of jobs that you can’t do and be on the ASO AC at the same time.

So I was in very good shoes, and this has now been a decade. We all have the ability to have wonderful discussions here, even if they seem heated, they are cordial and they are productive.

Has anybody, if you want to raise your hands, been to another region? Have you participated? Okay. Good set of hands, right? We are completely different in every region. We’re all the same, we all need Internet resources, but how regions operate, the culture of each region is different.

And if you try to force your culture globally on all of the regions or other people from other regions, that doesn’t work very well. And that is probably the hardest job for the next person and the person after that who wants to be on the NRO — and I wanted to make this clear — is being able to work with other cultures who aren’t familiar with bombastic Kevin at the mic, you know? Or snarky Kevin at the mic.

You have to be — you’ve got to set a different mood. So I once used a, well, “I’m a lawyer, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.” And people in the ARIN region would get that. Nobody else really got it.

So good luck, Kat, good luck to the next person after that, and the person after that. I expect that there will continue to be work that is done by the NRO NC for the years to come, and wish the next person good luck with that. Thank you.

So I’m going to ask if there are questions related to this, or just questions about the NRO or ASO.

Hollis Kara: Any questions for Kevin?

Kevin Blumberg: There’s got to be one. Come on, just one.

Hollis Kara: Somebodythrow him a softball, at least. Come on.

Eric Landgraf: Eric Landgraf, Virginia Tech. So, Kevin, you’re saying there’s a serious and non-humorous version of you?

Kevin Blumberg: It does exist.

Chris Tacit: Kevin, I just wanted to thank you for all your service all these years. You’ve done a great job being a very temperate and moderate advocate for our region, so we appreciate that.

Kevin Blumberg: Thank you. (Applause.)

Doug Camin: Doug Camin, Cortland County, New York, I was also going to thank you for your service.

Kevin Blumberg: Who is this person?

Alyssa Quinn: Alyssa Quinn, NRO. I’m from the ARIN region, and I did not get your joke about the Holiday Inn Express.

(Laughter.)

Kevin Blumberg: I think that’s more an age issue than it is a regional issue.

Alyssa Quinn: And then the other thing is, thank you, Kevin, for all of your years of service and all of your mentoring of myself and tons of other folks in this room. It’s much appreciated. We hope to keep seeing you around.

Kevin Blumberg: Thank you.

(Applause.)

Leif Sawyer: Leif Sawyer, GCI and ARIN AC. Alyssa stole the words right out of my mouth. I wanted to recognize that third Kevin that you forgot to bring up, and that is mentorship Kevin. I wouldn’t be here without you, so thank you.

(Applause.)

Hollis Kara: Don’t make Adair snort.

(Laughter.)

Adair Thaxton: Adair Thaxton, Internet2. I just wanted to compliment you on how esoteric your “Star Wars” references were. I don’t think I got a single one.

John Stitt: John Stitt, Hopkinsville Electric System. Also just wanted to thank you for your time, but you’re speaking to the Fellows. I got a lot out of that. Learned a lot about how the NRO NC works and ICANN. And even though I don’t always agree with what you say at the mic, your getting up and having something to say has motivated me to do the same at times. And so I just want to thank you for that example that you’ve given us all.

(Applause.)

Michael Sinatra: Michael Sinatra, ESnet.

As someone who, maybe not in the last seven years, but has been coming to ARIN for about 20 years, I have seen all forms of Kevin and they’re all good. I like them all. And thank you so much for all your work. And I want to also say I did get the Holiday Inn Express joke.

Kevin Blumberg: Thank you, I think then it is an age issue, unfortunately.

Hollis Kara: Thank you, Kevin. (Applause.)

That was a good bait and switch to dodge any serious questions. For that, I’m going to pull up my very jet-lagged chief legal officer, Michael Abejuela, to talk about the status of the RIR Governance Document Update.

(Applause.) Good luck, man.

RIR Governance Document Update

Michael Abejuela: Good luck, she says. I will try not to fall asleep because I’m on a 12-hour time difference from my last trip.

So good afternoon, everyone. We’re going to do a little RIR Governance Document Update here, although you heard from Kevin that it’s a different title, but for now we will call it the RIR Governance Document.

First and foremost, I do want to recognize that Kevin — we’ve thanked Kevin. I want to thank the whole NRO NC for their work on this. You’ll see from the timeline from his presentation that the principles were presented back in 2024, but this work actually started when it was first tasked by the EC in October 2023. So here we are, 2026. That’s three years. There’s been a lot of meetings, a lot of work, a lot of travel.

Kevin has done a lot, Amy Potter. We had Alyssa Quinn, who is now on the NRO NC, but also Nick Nugent, who was previously on the NC. So I think they deserve a lot of recognition for what they’ve done, because it’s been a lot of work. It’s been a lot of time invested. I think it’s literally thousands of hours, if you look at all of them put together.

So definitely want to thank them for all that work to get us to this stage where we are right here.

(Applause.)

And the other group, I think, that really is due some recognition is Hollis and Ashley and their team, with the Comms Department, as well as the RIR, their colleagues at the other RIRs, because the comms departments were really helpful.

You heard Kevin talk about all the feedback.

And I will say this group, along with the support staff, painstakingly went through to make this a true community process, went through all of the comments. There was nothing that was ignored. They did not just throw some — that’s too many. They went through all of them, categorized them, put them in spreadsheets, reviewed them, made sure they were addressed. And that is not a small piece of work, so I think we really need to thank them for that, too, as well.

(Applause.)

So part of this seems to be that Kevin went through and looked at the RIR Governance Document, and I feel like this is kind of a tag-team effort, because he went over and said how the NRO NC worked on this for the past three years. They handed it over to the NRO EC as completion of their task in July of this year.

And then it went to the NRO EC who turned around and said, lawyers, go look at this also, make sure that — we’ve been involved throughout the process, but now time for us to have some conversations, particularly with ICANN, because as you can read in the document, ICANN has a pretty significant piece in this.

And so we wanted to look through it. And this is going to be a presentation about the next steps of what happened there.

So as you can see, let’s see, all right. So the EC provided the document to ICANN for consideration so that we can have discussion on that. We’ve been meeting all week. So you heard Hollis say I’m jet-lagged because I flew in yesterday from Bali, because ICANN was meeting in Bali. And we had some very big discussions. Even John Curran, he came probably, I think, a day before me, so we’re both a little bit jet-lagged because we had some very good discussions over there, some productive discussions, and I’ll go into that in a little bit.

But we were talking to discuss any kind of issues that may be seen with the draft that was turned over from the community. Now, one thing I will say is that we are very focused on recognizing the efforts of the community And that, to the extent possible, we do not want to have to make any changes to that, but we are looking at things that may be conforming changes, things that might be an issue in terms of implementation and operation for this document.

But we are committed to completing this process as quickly as possible and as diligently as possible. And let’s see what the updates are.

So even the community has gone through three years of talking about this, we still have one more chance for the community to have a comment, because before we can even consider adopting this, we need to go to a last-call period.

This is not a global policy. So this didn’t go through the Global Policy Development Process. But when we started this, we looked at and tried to borrow from the Global Policy Development Process some principles there to be able to kind of align that as much as possible, because it’s very important that the community was involved in this.

So we have a last-call period that we’re going to be looking into, once we’ve looked and seen if there’s any kind of conforming changes or last changes that we need to the document. That will include both a last-call process from the RIR side, but also then a public-comment process per ICANN’s side, because they need to go through that before their Board can decide if they’re going to actually move forward with this and are able to accept kind of the obligations and the terms that’s there. So in doing so, we are going to be trying to talk about where we can make any conforming changes, and we were hoping that we would already be, if you looked at the timelines that were previously released, we were hoping that we would be there at this point.

We are getting close. Again, I said we had very productive conversations. We are trying to make, you know, progress there so we can get to that point, bring it back to the community, so there will be final comments there.

Our hope is is that through all the work for the past three years and through the work of the legal folks and then also the administrations, that we’ll be able to have something that is workable, and then looking to adoption. Now if we look at the best timeline possible, it would be great if we could finish everything and get to the ICANN meeting in Lisbon in March of next year to be able to do our final adoption and approval. But, again, this would also still need, beyond the public comment period, beyond the last-call period, then a presentation to the five RIR Boards, as well as the ICANN Board for full adoption of this. So lots of moving pieces and lots of steps that we need to get to.

The other thing is, and just to note as you review this and it does go to the last-call period, this is a framework document. So it is not meant to go through every single detail of how we’re going to be moving forward with this. This is the overall framework. It’s an update to ICP-2. Added some additional things, as Kevin said, that were implicit before, now is explicit, because you have the four bucket areas. You have recognition. You have audit. You have emergency continuity. And you have derecognition, if needed.

So on top of all of that, we imagined that, one, there will be probably new requirements there here, which imagines a three-year grace period for the RIRs to come into compliance. And also that we will be working — if we were to have everything adopted in Lisbon in March, at least for our side, for the RIRs and for ICANN, that is not the end. This still contemplates implementation procedures on how this would be put forth, how we would actually fulfill the obligations and the mandates of the document.

The one thing that you will note is that if we go to implementation procedures, nothing in those will be in conflict with the RIR Governance Document itself. But that will be a long process, because this will start going into things like audits. How do we do that? How do we prove compliance? What do we do about emergency continuity and the details of, let’s say, data escrow and how things would happen?

So there’s still a lot to be done. We’ll be working on that. But the first big step is actually getting an update to the ICP-2 so that we can get to this final document.

And with that, that’s all I have right now, with also the hope that you all cross our fingers that our conversations will be very productive in the coming weeks, because it’s in the weeks that we want. We want to get everything finalized and get the last call so you all will have something to be able to comment on.

But with that…

Hollis Kara: All right, do we have any questions for Michael? (No response.) (Applause.)

And then also before we move on, a big thank you to the NRO legal teams who have been working very hard on this document. You forgot to thank yourself, Michael.

Michael Abejuela: I agree. Thank you. (Applause.)

All right. Well, with that, could I invite John Curran to come up for our next thing.

Hollis Kara: Get ready, guys. We’re going.

John Curran: Okay. So I’m up here to —

Hollis Kara: We’re thanking — I’ll just jump right in.

John Curran: Let me get my slides.

Hollis Kara: No, that’s okay, that’s okay. So we’ve got a lot of people who have participated in this process across the last several years have had kind of a sideline seat on a lot of this. If I could get Chris Quesada, Kevin, and Alyssa Quinn who are here in the audience to come up and join us on stage. Unfortunately, Nick and Amy aren’t here, but we’d like to offer you a thank you so if you could please come on up. (Applause.)

John Curran: That’s what I was looking for.

Hollis Kara: Michael, say more nice things. All right. I’m going to hand these out one by one. We’ve got Certificates of Appreciation for all of our members, but we also have a pen — you guys get it? You get the joke? A pen, yes, because they’ve had the pen for quite a long time. And they were very happy to get rid of the pen. There you go. You can give that one to Chris. I’ll give this one to Kevin.

Sorry, I just jumped in and took over. All right. Here we go. Hang on to your pretty pen. And then if you guys can hold those and smile big, we’ll take a picture.

Everybody clap. (Applause.)

John Curran: I just want to say, the amount of hours that went into this, particularly in the early phase, when these folks were doing their work, literally in October of 2023, I sent this little email over and said, “Hey, when you get a chance, can you take a look at ICP-2 and maybe update it?”

And I did think, this is bigger than they imagine. This is going to take six months, a year. Here we are, three years later. But the bulk of getting it started and handling it and going through the last two and a half years has been an epic amount of work.

And these folks really — I can’t say with more praise how they rose to the occasion and made it happen. So very, very pleased.

(Applause.)

We all set?

Hollis Kara: We are all set. Chris and Alyssa are dismissed. Kevin’s stuck. Don’t go anywhere, Kevin. We’ve got a paperweight to throw at you. Can we go to the next slide? There we go.

John Curran: Kevin, for your leadership. Thank you very much.

Kevin Blumberg: You’re welcome. Thank you. (Applause.)

Hollis Kara: Hold on, I’ve got to give Kevin some packing materials. And then if we want to go to the next slide, and Nancy, if you want to come up, I think that brings us to our Open Mic.

Open Microphone

John Curran: Microphones are open.

Bryan Peterson: Bryan Peterson, from the Utah Education Network and the University of Utah. First time attendee in person, also a Fellow, which I feel like none of us have got up to the mic at this point, probably because we’re kind of shy, I guess, in a way.

But I wanted to thank Amanda and the others with the Fellowship Program for providing us this opportunity. It’s been fabulous to see the processes and things here and attend NANOG and get to hang out with fellow techies and that kind of stuff. And really appreciated the opportunity and all that you guys do here with ARIN. And thank you very much.

John Curran: Thank you.

Nancy Carter: Thank you. (Applause.)

Dan Alexander: Dan Alexander, ARIN Board, Comcast Cable. I just wanted to layer on a little bit to the compliments that have gone through today because we’ve talked about all the effort that the Advisory Council does, which is truly amazing, I mean, when you add up the hours. And having been at an ICANN meeting and saw the multiple days of 10-hour days that the NRO sat through working that document, truly amazing.

I’m just going to remind everyone, these are volunteers, they’re not paid for any of this. The thousands of hours that they put into these efforts is truly amazing. Thank you.

(Applause.)

Doug Camin: Doug Camin, Cortland County, New York, and ARIN Advisory Council Vice Chair. I just wanted to comment, two comments. One is that I want to thank the community for all the feedback we got today. This is a really big feedback day for us, for the work we’ve done.

Thanks to the other Advisory Council members for your work, but also to the community for giving your input, which is really important. And this has been a really robust and constructive set of discussions. So thank you.

John Curran: Excellent.

Doug Camin: Second, sorry, I want to also, I’m going to call and give a shout out to Ken over there on the sound for during our thing, during the voting, slipping in the “Miami Vice” theme song.

(Laughter.) Props, man. (Applause.)

John Curran: Who are you?

Kevin Blumberg: Kevin Blumberg, The Wire. I do want to thank the ICANN organization, not just for their support, but for every once in a while giving us a window to look out of.

(Laughter.)

But no, when you start putting in those 10-hour days, you will realize that a little bit of light is a good thing, especially for us.

One thing I didn’t talk about, because it wasn’t my place when I was up there, is the amount of time that the ASO put into this will be dwarfed by the amount of time that staff are going to need to put into this in the next three to five years.

John Curran: Right.

Kevin Blumberg: And the expectations of this document, and I think the expectations of the community, are significant, is a very nice way to put it. We are expecting a lot of everybody.

John Curran: Right.

Kevin Blumberg: That will fall to the community in terms of our asks and our expectations long term. We all have things we would like to be done. But ultimately, the RIR document, for me, personally, is one of accountability and auditability and long-term functioning, and doing it at a level that sets the bar very, very high. And so I wish you the best with that.

John Curran: Thank you.

Kevin Blumberg: I may or may not be involved, whichever. But as a community, we need to realize how much work that they’re going to do, and when our asks, whether it be policy or things we’d like to see, the next couple of years are going to be very, very hard. Thank you.

John Curran: Thank you. I just want to say — Kevin, thank you —the good news is the RIR Governance Document does establish escrow, audit, a number of provisions. But the community came together and expressed it with one clear voice. We have one global standard to apply to all the RIRs that we all have to meet.

It will be a lot of work, but it will be reassuring to everyone to know what’s in place. We’ve been operating for decades without some of the basic things you’d expect. And so it’s good that the community came together, gave it one voice. It’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s going to be worthwhile. So thank you.

Far mic.

Michael Sinatra: Michael from ESnet again. Definitely speaking for myself this time. I just want to say that I’ve had a chance to sort of step back and have a different role in ESnet. So I do most of the core routing now, so I don’t participate in this group as much. That’s given me an opportunity to kind of sit back and kind of see how things go and how other people make the sausage in terms of the managing the relationship with ARIN. And I think it’s gone really, really well.

I know I was a thorn in the side of John and John for years about things like the RSA and some of the challenges with that. That has, not just for us, but I think for a lot of organizations, ARIN’s flexibility around that has really put the entire community miles ahead now. And you can see the proof in the pudding.

The uptake in RPKI in the North American region now and also the quick adoption of ASPA — I know RIPE is bragging, as they always do, that they’re number one, but I think we’re number two by a pretty good margin. So that’s pretty good. That’s something to say.

(Laughter.)

So I really think that proof is in the pudding, and I also think that ARIN’s flexibility has been really good. I think ARIN’s also gotten a little bit more strict where it should have, as someone who works for a state university that manages a federal lab, that manages a network that supports a bunch of federal labs, who signs that RSA — and so it’s important that we got that right. And ARIN did a good job.

It was painful, but ARIN endured the pain, we endured the pain, and we got it done. So that was really good.

So I appreciate all the work that ARIN Legal and everyone else has been doing in making these agreements come together for a lot of organizations that have legacy space and everyone else.

John Curran: Thank you.

Michael Sinatra: Thank you. (Applause.)

John Curran: Far microphone.

Brent Mc Intosh: Brent Mc Intosh, Trans Americas Fiber System, but now I’m speaking more so about the Caribbean community. Every time I come to one of those meetings I always say I’m coming here to get a better understanding of the PDP. But the expertise experience on technical stuff that’s important to the Caribbean, I always get sidetracked and forget everything about policy.

I can say now, though, that the Caribbean is making really great strides in using things like RPKI, increasing the IPv6 growth and adoption. And, of course, this meeting is very important for us.

And having the opportunity to be a person as influential especially in that adoption phase, I want to say thank you. I currently oversee about 25-plus ASNs. And I’m happy to say that almost 95 percent of them are now moving to IPv6 and implementing things like RPKI. So hopefully I get to focus more on policy next time, but thank you very much for the opportunity.

John Curran: Thank you. (Applause.)

Far mic, Scott.

Scott Johnson: Scott Johnson, Spacely Packets. I was wondering if I could get the Fellows to raise their hands for me. I want to congratulate all of you on being selected as Fellows. I was a former Fellow myself. It’s a wonderful program. And let me tell you, it works better when you continue to participate. The people in this room are responsible for making sure the Internet continues to function, and you can be a part of that on an ongoing basis.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

John Curran: Microphones are open. Remote microphones are open.

Ashley Perks: No virtual questions.

Ron da Silva: Ron da Silva, Board and Election Officer. I had a question about, now that Kat is going to presumably resign when her term starts up, what does that mean to the election? I tried to clarify that earlier. It doesn’t mean anything to the election.

What that will mean is in January, the AC will be short one member. And the AC will then be able to, amongst itself, decide, do they want to fill that position, and if so, how, or how do they make the decision? Sure, traditionally, when there have been vacancies midterm, either on the Board or the AC, usually the Board or the AC will sometimes look in the rearview mirror what was the runner-up in the last election and consider them as a possible appointee. Not a guarantee, but it’s just a practice that has been exercised previously.

But, anyways, I hope that clarifies. There was a question about, what is the process around that? It’ll be the AC, probably in their January meeting, having a conversation about, do they want to appoint somebody and what process will they use to select somebody. Hope that helps.

John Curran: Yes. Okay. We’re running out of questions. If anyone has a question. Going to close the queues remotely. Close the local queues. There are none. I think that ends Open Mic. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

We have one more recognition to do. Our Trustee and Chair of the ARIN Board, Nancy, will be ending her term this year. She has put in an enormous amount of work to make the organization a success. I’m happy to work for her every day in her role as Chair and mine as CEO.

It would be remiss if we let her get off stage without recognizing all of her efforts. Nancy, thank you for your efforts. Huge round of applause.

(Applause.)

Nancy Carter: I’m going to cry. I’m going to cry. Thank you.

(Applause.)

John Curran: Truly, as CEO of ARIN, you have chairs that come and go. The organization changes. And when Nancy first became Chair, I was filled with a little trepidation.

Nancy Carter: John!

John Curran: I was not sure what to expect. And all I can tell you is that, everyone, if you have the honor, the pleasure of working in a capacity with her or working for her, I would take her up on it. Truly, it’s been an honor to work for you.

Nancy Carter: Thank you, John. Thank you so much.

John Curran: Thank you. That ends our meeting. We have some closing announcements, and look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow. (Applause.)

Closing Announcements

Hollis Kara: I guess we should end the day. We made Nancy cry. Geez.

(Laughter.)

Thank you for joining us. Don’t get ready to stop clapping yet, we have a few more thank yous to get through — don’t start clapping till I tell you. Come on, man. Don’t jump the gun.

All right, first of all, our Network Sponsor, AT&T. Now clap.

(Applause.)

Our Platinum Sponsor, AWS. (Applause.)

Our Silver Sponsor, Secure64 and FlashStart. (Applause.)

Our Exhibitor Sponsor, IPv4.Global by Hilco Global.

And of course our espresso bar host, Verisign. (Applause.)

If you can’t remember what happened today, don’t forget to check out the blog.

(Laughter.)

We’ll be posting it this afternoon. Send it to a friend if they want to see what you lived through.

Don’t forget, we’ll be going to the Ball & Chain this evening. Hope to see you there. Please wear your badge. If you have a guest, make sure you’ve paid your guest fee. Buses will be departing from the lobby at 6:30. We’ll have two buses at 6:30, one at 6:45, and return bus service will start at 8:30.

With that, thank you. We’ll see you guys tomorrow. Breakfast is at 8:00, meeting begins at 9:00. What did I forget, Ashley?

Ashley Perks: Nothing.

Hollis Kara: Oh, good. You gave me a look. I thought I forgot something. Thank you very much for being part of ARIN 58. (Applause.)

It’s been a dynamic day. And I appreciate everyone’s time. So be safe this evening and see you at the Ball & Chain.

(Adjourned - 4:40 PM)