Hi, my name is Ginny Listman. As of early December, I am the new Director of Engineering here at ARIN. In a meeting yesterday, to discuss database changes, the following policy issue came up.

Apparently, there have been some upstream ISPs that have assigned some networks via SWIP, where later the downstream comes back saying it should have been an allocation, ie they want a maintainer id so they can assign/allocate further on down.

In most cases, RSG has been granting the downstream's wish, creating the maintainer id, allowing them to further assign/allocate.

Many times, it is just a minor error in the SWIP template, and shouldn't be a big deal. However, would there ever be a situation where the upstream would not want the downstream to be assigning/allocating? Should ARIN be responsible for notifying the upstream? We have be processing these request because we do not want to delay the downstream's business. Do we need a written policy to define how we should be processing such a request?

The upstream might not be all that fond of its customer reselling service, and this may be taken into consideration by their contract, but the downstream is going to dole out the space regardless of their ability to SWIP subassignments. I would think that it's in ARIN's interest to foster the maintenance of as accurate a database as possible, and leave quarrels over type of service between a provider and its customers to the provider and its customers. It's not the RIR's responsibility to enforce contract terms between an ISP and its downstreams. Some mechanism should be provided for the maintainer of a block (either directly obtained from ARIN or from an upstream via SWIP) to list all allocations, assignments, suballocations, and subassignments so that he or she can enforce contracts appropriately. I'm personally glad that ARIN changes the status of blocks from assigned to allocated and performs other active maintenance upon request. It's been of direct value to me when upstreams do the wrong thing and assign instead of allocate or set the wrong maintainer ID on an allocation. These are usually misunderstandings, and getting them straigtened out would take weeks if done through the provider. All of that said, this can be taken to the logical extreme and the distinction between allocations and assignments can be eliminated altogether, and provider/maintainer IDs can be replaced purely with ARIN handles. Finally, the ability to submit assignment and allocation information via rwhois seems like a license for inconsistency. Rwhois was a great idea that never took off. It would be interesting if this information could be provided by splintering off a new DNS class (or at least some new RR types.) Has anyone ever considered this? Mark