Our abuse inbox has become a genuine problem.

[Jonh Newman]

Good morning. Our abuse inbox has become a genuine problem. We lease a couple of ranges and every complaint about a customer eventually turns into a chain of emails between us, the holder, and the registry, and nobody is clear on who is supposed to respond. Last month a slow response nearly cost us a range. I want to fix the process rather than keep firefighting. How do other teams handle abuse handling on leased space, and is this something providers actually take on? We are a team of four and nobody here has capacity to babysit an inbox full of forwarded complaints all day.

[Konstantin Volkov]

Some providers do take it on, and it is worth paying for if your team is small. The registry contact on a leased range is the holder, so complaints land there first, and if they just forward everything to you with no SLA you get exactly the mess you described. Better arrangements have the provider maintaining the RIR abuse mailbox and responding during the lease term, with escalation to you only when a customer needs to be shut off. That is how it works on the IPv4 , we lease through InterLIR Global. Whatever you do, get the response process written into the agreement rather than agreed on a call. Tip: keep a copy of every complaint and your response, because the registry will eventually ask for exactly that trail.