Rebuttal to Mr. Weisberg's insinuations Re: Important News from Don Telage about ARIN

At 11:38 PM 7/17/97 -0500, Robert T. Nelson wrote:
>
>I do not question your motivation. I presume that you do what you feel is
>best (difficult as that may be to discern, given issues like this one) for
>you and your business. I believe that you raise important points, however
>I also think that theyu are somewhat misdirected. I think you would be
>better off (on the IP Space issue) pushing for ARIN to be formed, and and
>working to see to it that all of us Netizens out here are protected from
>entities who try to hijack the process.

Agreed, save ARIN (as currently proposed) "tapers" into representation of
the membership over a period of significant time.  That's the key issue
here.  Why not a more immediate "taper" using less time.  Why not sunset
the original "organizers" quickly and let them stand for a vote of the
membership?  What is the transition period for, if we accept that the
process will eventually be run by the members?

>I will certainly respond to this. I have not been actively involved in the
>debate over ARIN. There are parts of the proposal that I am not wild
>about. I am personally pleased that leaders in the Internet Community have
>come up with an idea to get NSI out of the IP Space business, even if it
>takes NSI to start it up. It is a step in the right direction.

After more than 200 years of democracy in the US, I would think most people
in the US are comfortable enough with the democratic process to take more
than "a step in the right direction".  You hear the ARIN "taper into
democracy" thing on TV every once in a while - some country's dictator
proposing democratic elections some time in the future.

>A public vote should not necessarily occur on the issue of numeric space.
>Assignment of numbers is somewhat inherently (to me, anyway)
>non-democratic. If you can show me specifically how you intend
>to assign numbers from multiple registries, without having a coordinating
>body, I am very interested. This may sound like the "benevolent dictator"
>system, and to a degree, it is. It will eventually have to be torn apart,
>and a new system born. 

There are multiple registries now - APNIC, NSI/InterNIC, RIPE.  The
coordinating body is the IANA.

APNIC and RIPE have a policy of allocating /19s to small ISPs.  InterNIC
does not.

Why?  Is IANA|Internic of the opinion APNIC or RIPE are wrong in their
policy to allocate /19s to small ISPs?