[arin-discuss] ARIN Travel

[G.Hiscott]

Edward Lewis wrote:
> At 11:14 -0700 11/2/07, G.Hiscott wrote:
> 

> 
> ARIN is not to dominate the discussion.  ARIN is not the source of 
> influence.    If ARIN is unduly influenced by one corner of the 
> audience, it will fail its mission.  Ultimately it would wither and 
> fade.  If ARIN is unbalanced, shows bias, it is malfunctioning.  If the 
> situation is noticed and remains unfixed, ARIN should be dissolved.
> 
> The power of ARIN is not from it's position of dominance but via the 
> open, transparent, bottom-up process that those of us who have been 
> participating are fostering.  This is why I believe that the most 
> important part of the face-to-face meeting agendas are the open mics. 
> Any can have a say and the words are recorded into archived material. It 
> is not a monopoly.


Monopoly is not the right word.  It is a single source for IP address 
space in North America.  If an entity needs to have a dedicated block of 
IP address space, said entity is forced to work with ARIN to obtain the 
address space.

The fact is: Large communications companies can easily afford to pay the 
costs to maintain representation while the smaller companies struggle to 
keep a voice "at the open mic.".  This fact should be considered when 
ARIN thinks about how to grow.

The way they are doing it now is not appreciated by me or my 
organization and I think I can speak for the other small operations out 
there.


GJH