What do you want?

>From the beginning several of you have questioned the estimated budget
of approximately two million (not three million) dollars stating that
ARIN could be run with a staff of three or four.  For those who believe
this you need to decide if this is what you really want.  Maybe we
could run ARIN with this minimal staff, if you don't care about quality
of service.

You have to decide how important, as an ISP, IP numbers are to you.  Is
it okay with you to have your allocations take weeks, or months, since
we won't have the staff to handle all of the requests in a timely manner?

Is it acceptable to hire mediocre engineering staff?  Or to understaff
the engineering group to save you a couple of dollars?  

Should we ignore the allocation policies to help conserve address and
routing table space because they only mean more staff are required to
review requests?

Yes, we could automate address assignments and just give every requester
what they ask for, is this what you want?

Currently, the IP group has a staff of five employees reviewing IP
requests, allocating addresses and ASNs, registering in-addr information,
SWIPs and helpdesk and we are understaffed.  This number does not
include any engineering, admin or accounting support.

The proposed ARIN staff calls for an engineering staff of four.  Maybe
we'll be lucky and find one person who's an expert network engineer,
programmer, dba, sys admin, webmaster, etc. and doesn't mind working or
being on call 24 x 7.  If you know of such as person, great send him/her
over.  Of course, they'll have to be willing to work for less than the
going rate because some of you also don't believe that ARIN should
be paying staff the same amount as other Internet-related companies pay.

ARIN is your company, not mine.  If its service doesn't meet your
needs it will effect your business, your livelihood.  Isn't it better
to do it right? 

And finally, for those of you who think that "ARIN" is out to make
a financial "killing" and that "ARIN" is going to increase its fees
and stick it to the ISPs, please remember, YOU ARE ARIN!  Arin will
be doing whatever its members (you, the ISPs) tell it to.  


Kim Hubbard