Transferring InterNIC space from ARIN Database to other RIR databases

Hello all,

First, I'm very delighted to see some official action with this issue to 
happen.
Here are some comments and experiences to share.
Our LIR has been dealing with this InterNIC-space issue some time already.
We started our individual transfer process back 1999 and now it is almost 
completed.
There were other off topic things than plain address transfers, that is why 
it has taken so long time.

We have now moved five /16 allocations from ARIN to RIPE-db but there are 
some individual,
not very well aggregatable /24's still remaining in ARIN-db and of course 
the reverse information is still there.

 From my personal experience I think the following points among others already
mentioned should be noted, when transfers are planned or made:

- Good coordination between ARIN,RIPE-NCC and LIR, maybe some dedicated 
hostmaster(s) to dig into this
  from RIRs part, because this project needs lots of interaction.
  Some documentation or FAQ for
  LIRs/users would be nice, how to start and proceed. Also ARIN's way of 
presenting db-data
  is somewhat different compared to RIPE. Not all LIR's and especially not 
customers are familiar of it at first glance.
  Db-reports provided by ARIN-staff proved to be very helpfull when we did 
the cross referencing between RIPE-db and ARIN-db.

-Only one ticketing point should be used, it was frustrating to track 
things between two RIRs, especially
when they were not so very well aware of each others doings. Not to blaim 
them, on the contrary, they
were very helpfull in general.

- LIRs should be prepared to do some detective work, because many of the 
individual networks are not more
in the hands they were originally given and
maybe even not in use at all or visible in the public network at the time of
transfer moment, but some customers may still use it inside or wants to use 
it as a public address space in the near future.
They may even have the original documentation for the address space, but 
they didn't knew how to update
the data in ARIN-db or whom to contact.
How to decide what to do with these "black" networks ? Leave as they are or 
delete ?
Some public announcement  to reach the real users ?
(yes, I fully understand, the problem isn't new and the transfer isn't a 
solution for
unmaintained LIR-independant data, but we shouldn't really add more carbage 
in the RIPE-db)

- Status of the old networks (PA/PI), how to determine that, can we just
make new PI-assignments to RIPE-db ???

- Reverse transfers should be done and timing planned with care and the 
confirmation is needed
  from the customers/LIRs, because wrongly pasted/copied data causes BIG 
troubles,
(We unfortunately experienced this with one update)

- Care should be taken not to loose the original dates with same customers 
in ARIN-db,
   otherwise it will distract the AW-tools RIPE-NCC has.

Back to the original proposal.

 >* Proposal: to contact all affected persons in advance and have a more clear
 >picture before the transfer. Questions to ask:
 >     - Do both records represent the same person?
 >     - Would (s)he like to merge the contact data, in what manner?
 >After an answer to these questions is received:
 >     - Discuss protection issue (existing maintainer, coordinator's
 >maintainer, auth).

These are important and time consuming things to solve, all LIRs
don't have so many staff to do this.

 >Needs human work.

Yes, this is _very_ true and can't be avoided :)



Just my five euro cents...

Kristian Rastas, Sonera Local Internet Registry