Correcting the mistake

[Dave Stewart]

At 11:33 AM 9/14/00 -0500, Mury wrote:
>Absolutely we can find a solution.  Today?  Next week?  In an ideal world
>ARIN could institute a policy and we could all make it work
>tomorrow.  It's just not reality.  Some things are more difficult than
>others to make work.  Maybe web based hosting is more difficult to
>technologically achieve than other things.

It's not more difficult to achieve.  Certainly it can be done.  And easily.

The problems revolve around the ways to be able to track and bill for 
bandwidth utilization.  Even control utilization.

And I acknowledge that it's a problem.  Right now, it would be expensive to 
implement.

>Everything can be done, some things are more difficult than others.  Some
>things we *can't* do today, even though we are close.  I for one do not
>have the time, intelligence, or money to create the necessary hardware to
>make web based hosting work as IP based hosting does.  This policy is
>premature.

No question.  That's why I suggested retracting it, and re-announcing it 
with an effective date in the future.  As I said in a previous post, it 
doesn't *have* to be 90 or 120 days - maybe 6 months is doable - maybe 
not.  I don't know.

> > Part of the solution, in my opinion, is to continue to allow justification
> > based on IP-based virtual hosts.  If that's your business model, how 
> you've
> > built an entire company or even part of a company, then in my mind, that
> > justifies the allocation.
>
>That would be great, if ARIN would spell that out in the policy.  It
>cannot be left up for debate between ARIN staff and a person requesting
>space.

I agree.  Proper justifications do need to be spelled out.  But there also 
has to be room for special cases that either a) didn't exist when the 
policy was written or b) nobody thought to include in the policy.


> > Or, we can just let our fear of change rule our lives and our businesses.
>
>I hate these comments.  ISPs be nature are always changing or they
>wouldn't be ISPs.  None of us got here by sitting on our asses.

Many do change - some do not.  But you know as well as anyone that there's 
resistance to almost any change.  Particularly a change mandated by someone 
else.  None of us has a problem with change - when we initiate it, because 
by the  time we do initiate it, we're comfortable with it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the fear of change.  I just have a 
problem when people are obstinate for no other reason than that fear.

> > I'm fairly sure most of you will agree that we'd like to see more of the
> > thought process behind policy changes.
>
>That sure sounds good ;)

Then we need to make sure it becomes the practice at ARIN.

> > ARIN doesn't have the authority to put more than a band-aid on it.
>
>Well, then the system is flawed.  Instead of spending this precious time
>talking about one of ARIN policies, perhaps we should be figuring out how
>to find a real solution.

I really didn't intend to get into a debate about right/wrong.

Of course the system is flawed, and the game is rigged.  But don't let that 
stop you (badly paraphrasing Heinlein)  from playing.

All I meant to do was suggest a few ways that we can keep from being 
blindsided quite so badly by policy changes from on high.  I think they're 
workable.  Whether anyone "in power" at ARIN agrees is another matter.

>Of course for the sake of the community every company who sells web
>hosting products that would run fine on web based hosting should do it.

Yes.

A thought for those of you who do IP based hosting... why not put new 
clients/sites on name-based hosting as they come in, if possible.  If they 
need SSL, it isn't.. if they're paying per mb of transfer, it may or may 
not be.  It's just a thought.