SURIN Utah

• Board Members
• Board Meeting Schedule
• Bylaws
• UEN IP Address Allocation Policy
• Presentations/Minutes

• February Minutes
• Executive Overview
• The Need for a Unified Address Policy
• Considerations for Policy Development

Thanks to all those who participated in the SURIN Member Policy Call meeting. This meeting was held August 7, 2007 at the Utah Valley State College campus. A majority of the SURIN Board and two members of the Technical Advisory Council were present. Also, representatives from several districts and regions attended and participated.

Two policies were proposed, one from the Utah Education Network and one from Patrick McDermott, San Juan District Technical Director. Kevin Quire, UEN Senior Network Engineer, and Patrick were each given 15 minutes to present their respective proposals. Questions from the Board and other members of the audience were asked during and after these presentations.

The next step will be for the SURIN Technical Advisory Council (TAC) to review both Policy proposals. A combined Board and TAC meeting is scheduled for August 15, 2007.  Additional information regarding the disposition of these proposals will be available on this site after the conclusion of that meeting.

Several SURIN members expressed concerns at the Member Policy Call Meeting. An important area of concern is the fear that SURIN will begin a process of taking back IP addresses that are currently being used by member organizations. Further clarification was given, and is needed still, to address this concern.

SURIN members are currently using approximately 50% of available Class C address blocks. This leaves 50% of the blocks open. Also, there is one Class B block that is virtually open at the moment. UEN intends to use this open block to assist SURIN members with any addressing needs but will do so only with specific instructions from the SURIN Board of Trustees.

Priorities, as discussed by the SURIN Board members in attendance, for managing IP Address space are as follows:

1. Ensure that every SURIN member is allocated sufficient IP Address space that is necessary to meet individual networking requirements, and that IP Address requests are satisfactorily handled in a timely manner.
2. Allocate IP Address space from available blocks in a manner consistent with allocation goals and best practices.
3. Establish voluntary measures that may be taken by members to free up allocated but unused IP blocks.
4. Provide a means for education and assistance in helping SURIN members move to IPv6 IP address blocks and guidance in practices to efficiently use IPv4 address space.
5. Explore and implement policies that more aggressively require members to free up allocated but unused IP Address space.
6. Establish voluntary re-addressing measures for SURIN members to free existing fragmented IP blocks and obtain contiguous address space in return.
7. Mandatory implementation of policies to manage IP address space

Additional options may be available and, as yet, unexplored. The general feeling is that careful adherence to priorities two through four can give us the ability to ensure that priority one is met for many years to come. It may be necessary to seriously address priority 5 in the next few years and priorities 6 and 7 will likely not need be addressed in the foreseeable future, at least not in any broad-scale initiative. It is probable that re-addressing on a local scale will always be part of IP address management by districts and schools. SURIN and UEN can and will act in a consulting capacity as these re-addressing needs arise.

The mission of SURIN is to establish policies that ensure all SURIN members always have enough IP Addresses to meet ever-increasing network requirements. IP Address availability will not be an issue in the future as SURIN establishes policies and these policies are managed by UEN and followed by the SURIN member organizations.