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