Re: AltDB?

[John Curran <jcurran () arin net>]

On Jan 9, 2011, at 6:30 PM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:
> John,
>
> I appreciate you taking time to respond to this while on vacation.
> However, I think we all know that your response is not a "here is how
> you tell us what to do," it's a "here is our cop-out response to make
> an incredibly simple fix either never happen, or take six months to
> make it through the ARIN process."

Jeff - 

As it turned out, I'm back from vacation but thanks for the thought.  
My reason for responding is simply to make sure that ARIN is doing 
what the community wants.  I won't deny that this may take some time
depending on exactly what is involved, but in my mind that is far 
better than not fixing the situation.

> If you truly do not understand the posts regarding this matter, I will
> summarize them for you very simply:
> 1) ARIN IRR is a tool that has operational impact; service providers
> use it to build prefix-lists automatically, and if the data that
> underlies those prefix-lists is corrupted, networks that use the ARIN
> IRR will see their transit providers stop accepting their BGP
> announcements overnight.  This is not a "some database might be
> inaccurate but it's okay," problem; it is an operational problem.
> Some peoples' networks depend on that data not becoming corrupted.
> Specifically, every network that uses ARIN IRR.

Thanks; I'm aware of the ARIN IRR and how operators in the community
make use of it, and have run ISPs which have made use of the data 
for route filtering.

> ...
> I appreciate that there is a process to go through for proposing ARIN
> policy changes, etc.  Your suggestion that this be used when
> addressing an operational security matter is foolish and provides
> plenty of ammo for people who say ARIN is ineffective (or worse.)

Agreed; dropping me an email is a fine process for operational
security matters.  Consider this one so reported.

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN