[arin-discuss] Status of Investigations

[Dean Anderson]

[ARIN agrees that discussion to recall Board members, to conduct
investigations of ARIN expenditures, and to stop certain ARIN
expenditures does not violate the ARIN AUP.]

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:

> > 2. Truth is an absolute defense to claims of libel.
> 
> Not here it isn't! You have to go to a court of law in
> order to use the "truth" defense. 

You have to go to court to hold someone accountable for libel. 

> On this list, if you constantly annoy us then we don't have to pay
> attention to you any more or read any of your messages.

On this list, ARIN is subject to US Law governing corporations, and
other US laws; There are laws governing what corporations can do, and
corporations cannot prevent members from investigating the activities of
a membership corporation. Of course, as a member, you are free to read
or not read anything you wish.  You are also free to vote anyway you
wish.

> > Question: Why is ARIN paying to have the rest of these people learn
> > to configure BGP and configure spam filters, and other technical
> > network operation tasks? This seems to be recoverable.
> 
> Question: If you haven't even got the faintest clue of what NANOG is
> and what kind of things are discussed at NANOG, then why are you
> wasting our time with this nonsense?

Well, I have recently analyzed attendence at NANOG over the last 10+
years. I have read the NANOG list for over 10 years, and participated at
times. I have worked in this industry for 20 years. I have some idea of
what NANOG does and what NANOG doesn't do. But the best evidence is
objective: Let's see what NANOG says about itself:

>From NANOG's charter:

  "The purpose of NANOG is to provide forums in the North American 
  region for education and the sharing of knowledge for the Internet operations 
  community.

  NANOG is a small venue in which technical matters pertaining to network 
  operations and network technology deployment in Internet providers may 
  be discussed among experts. "


In fact, examining the attendence records of NANOG I found that:

2 in 3 of the attendees dropped (never came back) after only 1 meeting
4 in 5 dropped after only 2 meetings
7 in 8 dropped after only 3 meetings
9 in 10 dropped after only 4 meetings

  NANOG 41 was the first meeting attended by 145 attendees (33% of
total).  Statistically, 100 or so will never return.

  NANOG 41 was attended by 79 people (18%) who had attended more than 10
meetings. There are only 184 people in the world who have attended more
than 10 meetings. 

Indeed, the facts I found indicate that NANOG is essentially a small
club; if you are pals with about 184 or so core members (those who have
attended more than 10 meetings), you come back repeatedly. Those who
aren't, never come back.



Contrast the NANOG charter with the jobs of these ARIN employees:

13|Ray Plzak            Executive President & CEO
17|Richard Jimmerson    Executive Chief Information Officer
2|Nate Davis            Executive Chief Operations Officer
1|Therese Colosi        Human Resources Executive Assistant
1|Ray Stark             Engineering Windows System Administrator
1|Abram Thielke         Engineering Software Engineer
3|Tim Christensen       Engineering System Architect
1|Matt Rowley           Engineering Unix Systems Administrator
2|Ming Yan              Engineering Database Administrator
7|Michael O'Neill       Engineering Network Administrator
2|Cathy Murphy          Engineering Principal Software Engineer
1|Darren Kara           Engineering Database Administrator
6|Matt Ryanczak         Engineering Systems Operations Manager
20|Leslie Nobile        Registration Services Director of Registration Services
4|David Huberman        Registration Services Technical Specialist
1|Jon Worley            Registration Services Senior Resource Analyst
4|Cathy Clements        Registration Services Principal Resource Analyst
4|Jason Byrne           Member Services Membership Operations Manager
6|Susan Hamlin          Member Services Director of Member Services
4|Einar Bohlin          Member Services Policy Analyst
2|Erin Centanni         Member Services Meeting Planner
2|Erika Goedrich        Member Services Membership Coordinator


What do all these people have to do with network operations or 
subjects of NANOG?  Only one is a network administrator.

22 ARIN employees (almost half the company!) have been attending NANOG.  
Even the HR Executive Assistant has attended NANOG?  This is improper
expenditure of ARIN funds.

6 of 7 ARIN Board members are participant beneficiaries of NANOG, and so
have a conflict of interest.  The 7th (Scott Bradner) is a 3-time
speaker and has not disclosed whether he was compensated for the
speakerships.

In contrast, ARIN counts about 2900 members, mostly corporations, which
aren't represented by NANOG. Yet 3 of the 184 NANOG core members work
for ARIN. 5 of the ARIN board members are in that 184 people. The
advisory council is similarly over-represented by frequent NANOG
particants.  I think it is curious that ARIN should be so infiltrated by
one small group. But it is improper for ARIN to be making unusual
financial transfers to NANOG with undisclosed conflicts of interest. A
significant part of NANOG's funding comes from ARIN.

> > I have a message from a frequent NANOG attendee (13 meetings) 
> > who says that a recent IP Address Allocation was done in a 
> > few hours, start to finish. This seems quite odd, and 
> > contrary to what most people experience. Furthermore, it 
> > seems impossible to fully and properly evaluate an IP Address 
> > Block request in so short a time.
> 
> I have also had at least one IP address allocationthat was done
> in a few hours but I have had others, with the same company,
> that dragged on for months. The one time that we got it done
> in a few hours was also the time that we submitted a full set
> of data to backup the request including some charts and graphs
> and a full dump of our reassignment data down to the /32 level.
> Also, by that time we had established a reasonable reputation 
> with ARIN over the course of 4 or 5 allocation requests.

Good to know. I note also that you have attended 5 NANOG meetings, and
remain a frequent participant in NANOG.

> P.S. by now everyone knows where to contact you if they wish to 
> join in your legal actions against the ARIN board. Please do
> not post anything further to the ARIN mailing lists about this.

If you mean action under the the bylaws to recall a board member, this
is the proper forum to discuss that subject.  The bylaws do not permit
ARIN to place such restrictions. In anycase, you do not speak for ARIN.


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