[44net] Answering recent questions, providing context

Hi everyone, Just a note to say QSL on many of the recent messages, as well as to provide some information that hopefully addresses some of the inquiries and concerns. In particular, there are many questions about what regional coordinators can and cannot do with the new portal, as well as requests for more clarity surrounding the Level of Trust (LoT). At a high level, here are some brief updates about each of those items: 1. One of the biggest concerns we have heard from coordinators is that they are not able to administer their address space on the new Portal. Specifically, members report that they are unable to place requests for address space in the regional/country allocations. The new portal defaults to keeping address assignments private, however you can enable requests by changing the network’s “Mode” from “Private” to “Open,” this will allow members to place requests within the assignment. If anyone requires further information on how to manage this, please contact: newportal(a)ardc.net. 2. As many of you have pointed out, having a single person administering the Portal also creates a bottleneck. Additionally, it creates a single point of failure. The new Portal has the facility to assign tasks to various Administrator roles to address this issue. 3. The Level of Trust (LoT) was established so that we at ARDC can better ensure a user’s identity with a significant degree of confidence. In general, there are two major categories: 1) BGP users and 2) non-BGP users (i.e., “everyone else”). As there is a greater risk associated with BGP, a higher LoT is required, and thus, more information will be required for BGP allocations. For non-BGP users (/25 addresses and smaller), we only verify your email address, given name, family name, and active call signs. BGP usage requires additional postal address verification, which takes a few more steps. Many thanks to BGP users, in particular, for your patience here. With the Portal and with 44Net in general – the goal is to do what we can to increase usage and to make our technology better. We're also evolving as an organization, which means evolving processes to become more collaborative and streamlined in everything from policy development to tech releases. We still have some way to go to reach an optimal state. It's difficult to get there without hitting some snags and bumps, particularly when working with dozens of intelligent people with varying ideas about the “right” way to build something. We are committed to getting there, and we are already learning lessons from this experience that will make the next rollout better. In the meantime, to anyone who feels like they aren’t being heard, please know that you are. We are taking this feedback seriously for future features and processes. We’ll also follow up with regional coordinators to find a time for a group discussion in the coming weeks. Please also note – as some of you have likely seen – we are down a key employee due to him becoming SK: https://www.ardc.net/remembering-john-hays-k7ve-sk/ We had another employee depart a couple of weeks before John’s death. The loss of these two people means a loss of 20% of our staff. As a result, we are unexpectedly working through things more slowly than we would like. I ask everyone for patience while we get our feet back under us and restaff (which will take at least a couple of months). I hope this message helps to clarify where we’re at. As always, if you have any questions and/or would like further clarification, please don’t hesitate to reach out, and we will help as much as we can. Thank you again to everyone for your patience, and we also appreciate the productive components of the feedback received. 73, Rosy KJ7RYV -- Rosy Schechter - KJ7RYV Executive Director Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) ardc.net