Global council of registries???

On Mon, 28 Apr 1997, Rudolph J. Geist wrote:

> The point is that there are certain portions of an ISPs application that 
> should be subject to attack by other ISPs before that ISP gets numbers. 

First of all, ISPs are not the only ones who apply to the registries for
address space. Secondly, what you are suggesting is tantamount to a cartel
ín which existing ISPs decide who gets to join the club. 

Sorry, but this will *NEVER* happen. ARIN will be applying a set of
policies based on RFC2050 just like RIPE, APNIC and the other 2 new
registries will be doing. The policies themselves will be discussed and
decided upon in open public discussion just as they always have been.
However, the information required to make the decisions is too sensitive
commercially that it simply cannot be divulged, not even to people within
ARIN who don't need it to specifically do their jobs.

> Do you not agree that before an ISP gets space, it should have to prove 
> certain technical characteristics.  

Yes. And that's why ARIN will have skilled network engineers on staff
who will sign non-disclosure agreements and who will examine the
applications to make sure they meet the public requirements. In fact,
this is exactly how it is done now.

> And do you not agree that it is 
> arbitrary and capricious if say, a very large allocation somehow goes to 
> an ISP with no technical plan.  And do you not agree that there is a 
> substantial possibility of this happening behind a single closed door 
> organization.

Not likely. While the applications will be confidential, the resulting IP
allocations will be full public knowledge. It would be hard to hide any
arbitrary and capricious behavior.

> Now, don't you agree that if there was a check on this in 
> the form of peer review (i.e, some proprietary information is required 
> to be made available to justify technical qualification and need to 
> receive IPs,) there would be less likelihood of impropoer allocations.

No. I think peer review would only politicize the issue and destroy the
IP registry.

Quite frankly, I don't understand why Erol's has a lawyer involved in what
is primarily a network engineering issue. ARIN would probably make a lot
more sense to you if you understood how the Internet infrastructure
operates. Have you read through all the documents in the Recommended
Reading section at http://www.arin.net yet?

Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-250-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com