[arin-discuss] Legacy RSA

[Michael Smith]

On Nov 10, 2007, at 11:54 AM, Dean Anderson wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
>> It is in ARIN's interest to help keep their own meeting costs
>> affordable for all attenders.
>
> I agree.  So ARIN management has to show that joint meetings reduce
> ARIN's costs.  So far, ARIN's involvement with NANOG has increased  
> those
> ARIN's costs by $130,000+

I decided to poke around on the RIPE and APNIC sites and look through  
their budget line items.  There are lots of places it could be hidden,  
but it appears that neither organization gives money directly to one  
of the NOG's in their region.  In fact, it looks like APNIC receives  
support from them as opposed to giving support to them.
>
>
>> You are treading on very squishy ground here.  Granted, for ARIN to  
>> pay
>> an EXCESSIVE amount of money to share meeting space with NANOG is
>> as you say, probably not in ARIN's interest.
>
> This isn't just about sharing meeting space. This is about paying for
> ARIN employees and Board Members to attend Nanog meetings. This about
> giving ARIN funds directly to NANOG, while the ARIN Board Members have
> conflicts of interest.  That ground is not squishy at all. The  
> ground is
> getting hard and interesting for people who read draft charge books.

Again, in looking at RIPE and APNIC, the travel expenses for ARIN are  
far and away higher than the other two.  Anecdotally, I would think  
that travel in the APNIC region would be significantly higher than in  
the ARIN region.  I don't know whether or not this is evidence of  
conflict of interest, but it is interesting regardless of the reasons.
>
>
>> But, who am I kidding.  Clearly you just don't want to have any
>> benefits whatsoever go to NANOG even if doing this would be cutting
>> off ARIN's nose to spite it's face - so let's just agree here that
>> your not going to see reason on this issue no matter what.
>
> Nonsense. I have no objection to ARIN sending an invited speaker to
> NANOG meetings to inform Nanog members about what ARIN is doing. But
> that's where ARIN's charter ends.  Sending $130,000 to NANOG isn't in
> the charter. ARIN isn't chartered to do actual network operations,  
> even
> if NANOG were an honest organization where that was done.

Leaving out the honesty statement, I agree that it is interesting that  
we send 50k annually to NANOG/Merit and, I'm assuming, also pay  
through the travel expenses to send ARIN "staff" to the meetings as  
well.

What I see is a lot of questions about how the money is being spent.   
I think it would serve ARIN well to give a breakdown of these various  
expenses to bring the issue to a close, one way or the other.

Regards,

Michael Smith
mksmith at adhost.com