ARIN · RIR Watchdog
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BTW reporting and context linked to this RIR. For the proposal-by-proposal history, the people involved and their changing positions, start with Policy.
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ARIN’s 29 August Stats Pair Split Across Two 2023 Filenames
ARIN’s public statistics directory contained a small but unusually legible publishing error on 29 August. The current data and checksum were available under their correct 2026 names, yet current-period artifacts also appeared through two extra paths dated 2023—and those two paths…
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ARIN Accepts Non-Human Service Accounts. Its Guide Still Says to Use an Individual Email
ARIN closed a four-year request on 29 July after removing the account-creation restriction on non-human service accounts. The implementation gives network operators a proper principal for automation. The public instructions have not yet made the same transition: the account guide…
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ARIN’s ROA Alerts Follow Deletion, Not the Change in Routing Authority
ARIN can commit several routing authorizations in one transaction, yet its documented alert boundary still follows a single verb: delete. Two public suggestions expose the resulting choice between inbox noise and silence. A safer design would report the net change once.
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ARIN Approved Its Leadership Procedure Only as a Guideline
The most important word in ARIN's April 2026 leadership motion was not *procedure*. It was *guideline*. Across three Board meetings, Trustees moved a proposed leadership-selection document away from formal prescription and toward a one-page aid for succession conversations. That…
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At ARIN, Resource-Level Tech Authority Stops Before the ROA
ARIN's records can give a Technical Point of Contact authority over one network resource while routing-security actions remain organized around the containing organization. A newly confirmed suggestion asks ARIN to bridge that gap. The hard part is not adding another permission…
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ARIN Published a 15-Seat Fellowship Ceiling. Its Roster Has 19
ARIN’s Fellowship timeline and its selected-Fellows announcement describe the same ARIN 58 cohort with different capacities. The planning page stops at 10 in-person and five virtual places. The announcement keeps the 10 in-person places and raises the virtual count to nine. A…
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ARIN Put the Reg-RWS Key in a Header. That Does Not Make It Uncapturable
ARIN now accepts a Reg-RWS API key in the `Authorization` header while continuing to accept the same credential in a URL query string. The new channel removes a dangerous source of routine propagation, but the public record still needs to distinguish a safer request shape, client…
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ARIN’s RDAP Parent Handle Describes Registration Hierarchy, Not Network Transit
Two handles in one ARIN RDAP response can reconstruct how an address block sits inside the registry, but they cannot reveal who carries its traffic. The distinction is small in syntax and consequential in analysis.
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ARIN Calls Its Space Policy Joint. IETF Has Not Adopted the Address Model
ARIN-2026-1 says the proposal is joint with an IETF working group. The linked IETF record says the address model has no formal standing, and the working-group chairs found no clear consensus to adopt it as-is. Both statements can be faithfully recorded only if institutional…
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ARIN’s 28 “Legitimate” Fraud Reports Were Not 28 Findings of Fraud
ARIN’s annual shorthand divided 223 policy-noncompliance reports into 195 outside its fraud process and 28 deemed legitimate. The arithmetic is exact. The meaning is not. ARIN’s own quarterly record shows that the 28 include corrected records, withdrawn routes, unconfirmed…
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ARIN-2026-4 Calls Two Clauses Redundant. The Replacement Needs a Scope Map
ARIN’s consolidation draft says two IPv6 clauses can be retired without meaningful change. That may be right. But the old and proposed sentences do not name the same subjects, duties or qualifiers, so redundancy should be demonstrated proposition by proposition while the text is…
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The Date Line in 4.10: When ARIN’s Interpretation Becomes Text
`ARIN-2025-8` would put `within the ARIN service area` into NRPM 4.10 as a codification of existing staff practice. Its timetable says `Immediate`, while its comments say staff has no intention to extend the restriction to allocations issued before implementation. The statements…
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ARIN’s 75% Gate Depends on a Plan That Can Change
Sixty assigned prefix units are 75% of a plan containing 80 units. The same sixty are only 60% of a revised plan containing 100. No address has moved, yet the qualification result has. Draft Policy `ARIN-2026-2` makes that possible in principle because its proposed…
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ARIN’s RDAP Bottom Search Is a Coverage Answer, Not a Leaf List
One query for a `/21` returns a direct `/22` allocation and an administrative `/8`. The result looks upside down only if `rdap-bottom` is mistaken for a list of descendants; its real job is to account for registry coverage.
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ARIN’s NET Route List Stops at the Direct Allocation
An empty collection can look decisive until the query boundary is drawn. In ARIN’s routing-registry API, the ordinary NET route list ends at the direct registration; the downstream tree belongs to a different request.
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ARIN's Single-Site `/48` Lived in an Example Before It Reached the Rule
One site filled 100% of the `/48`s inside a `/48`. The sentence therefore pointed to `/44`; the example did not. ARIN-2025-7 repairs that small contradiction, and in doing so reveals a larger rule: examples must never become the hidden execution layer of number policy.
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The Nine Applicants and the Missing Settlement in ARIN Arbitration
Nine companies asked a federal judge to stop ARIN from revoking their IPv4 records. Five months later, an arbitrator rejected every claim and incorporated a settlement that the public file says is attached—but is not.
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ARIN's New “Sole Use” Definition Has No Observation Window
Imagine one address prefix serving three anycast sites: one inside ARIN's service region and two outside it. The inside site is withdrawn for maintenance, then restored an hour later. The holder, service design and prefix have not changed. Under the wording of a new ARIN…
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ARIN's ISP/LIR Claim Needs a Predicate Ledger
One card asks what a company sells. Another asks whether it receives and redistributes Internet number resources. Draft Policy ARIN-2025-1 wants every holder of the first card to fit inside the second. Its proposed definitions do not yet make that containment rule true.
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ARIN's IPv6 Waiver Expiry Notice Leaves the Transition Count Unstated
At midnight on 1 January, a `/36` will not gain a single address. Its holder may nevertheless cross a billing boundary. ARIN has announced the end of a five-year IPv6 incentive and promised direct contact; the missing public number is how many organisations must make that…