Regarding the ARIN Advisory Council and ARIN PDP (was: Re: Open Petition for ARIN-prop-266: BGP Hijacking is an ARIN Policy Violation)

[John Curran <jcurran () arin net>]

On 26 Apr 2019, at 5:49 PM, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via NANOG <nanog () nanog org> wrote:
> ...
> Not only that. I really think they have not invested enough time to read the proposal, check with the authors and 
> then take a decision. We have got some email exchange, but clearly not sufficient. I also must state that the staff 
> has been very helpful and diligent to clarify and support the petition process. Just the point is, should have never 
> been needed, it exposes how bad (in my opinion) is the ARIN AC model.

Jordi - 

I have no views on the particular policy proposal or the petition action, but want to be clear regarding some of your 
characterizations of the ARIN Policy Development Process (ARIN PDP).  It is correct that the ARIN Advisory Council (a 
body elected by the ARIN membership) is in charge of administering the policy development process, including working 
with submitters to get their proposals accepted as draft policies and revising draft policies based on the community 
discussion. 

In general, policy proposals are discussed at length between the submitter and the assigned ARIN Advisory Council (ARIN 
AC) members, with the goal of making a clear and understandable statement of the problem in number resource policy that 
is to be addressed – as that is the required criteria for a Draft Policy.  Once a policy proposal has a clear problem 
statement, the ARIN AC accepts it as a Draft Policy and it is discussed (often at length) on the ARIN Public Policy 
Mailing List.   The ARIN AC works diligently with submitters to make sure that their proposals are clear and adopted as 
Draft Policies, and this occurs even when the assigned AC members don’t necessarily support the merits of the 
particular proposal.   The strength of the ARIN PDP process is that nearly anyone can submit an idea for changes to our 
number resource policy (even with no knowledge of ARIN's policy development process) and the ARIN AC becomes their 
advocate in getting a clear draft policy put before the community for discussion.   We have had policy proposals made 
by several segments of the Internet community that are not deeply involved in the RIR system or the network operator 
community, but have insight into specific problems in number resource policy that they were able to get addressed. 

There is an exception to this process, i.e. a case where the ARIN AC doesn’t work on a policy proposal, and it occurs 
with proposals which lie outside the scope of number resource policy.  The ARIN AC does make an initial determination 
of whether the policy proposal is within scope – the reason for such an evaluation is to make sure that the community 
doesn’t spend its time working on proposals which aren’t germane to how ARIN administers number resources, and I will 
note the overwhelming majority of policy proposals meet this criteria with ease.  Additionally, ARIN’s Policy 
Development Process contains many “checks and balances” to provide for the development of fair and impartial policy, 
and as you are aware, in the case of a policy proposal out of scope, there is a petition with a very low threshold (10 
supporters) to provide for referral to ARIN’s Board of Trustees for review and final determination.  Having the Board 
of Trustees handle such determinations makes perfect sense, as they are ultimately responsible for determining the 
scope of ARIN’s mission. 

I understand that your policy proposal has been deemed out of scope, but I’d like to point of that such events are a 
very rare occurrence, and do not reflect the circumstances that the vast majority of submitters face when working with 
the ARIN AC and the ARIN Policy Development Process.   You might not see the merits of the ARIN Advisory Council 
administration of ARIN’s policy development process, but their efforts are almost universally in support of those 
submitting policy proposals, and the effectiveness of their advocacy demonstrated by the long line of clear, 
technically sound and useful policy changes in the ARIN region. 

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers