[arin-discuss] Team Cymru

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> > ... There seems to be tacit agreement that because Team 
> Cymru does a 
> > good job and is trusted, the RIRs don't try to usurp their work.
> 
> nope, nothing like that.  ARIN thinks it ain't broke, so, 
> ARIN doesn't fix it.

That is exactly what I meant when I said that there is a tacit
agreement. Sorry for not writing it in plain English.

> there's a potentially disturbing implication here, which is 
> that the services you think the RIR's could provide, that you 
> think cymru is providing now, are not free from cymru. 

I've no idea whether or not this is the case.

But it is clear that both ARIN and Team Cymru provide services
that report various attributes of IP address ranges. Some of
the attributes of IP address ranges can only be provided 
authoritatively by ARIN (such as who was allocated/assigned
the addresses) and therefore the two organizations really should
cooperate explicitly, not tacitly.

But even if ARIN and Team Cymru never cooperate explicitly, they
still exist, still provide services, and still have many happy
users of those services. Therefore, I thought that it was a 
good idea to mention to ARIN members that Team Cymru is out there.

> (this follows from my personal belief that monety ought to 
> follow uniqueness, i.e., that a supplier's cashflow and 
> equity growth should come from being the only, or the best, 
> supplier of a particular service, and not from inertia or 
> from unnecessary exclusivity on public goods or public 
> databases.  this is a personal position, not an ARIN BoT 
> position, nor an ARIN organizational
> principle.)

Seems to be a reasonable position. Seeing as how you are on
the ARIN BoT, maybe you could ask staff to keep track of 
Team Cymru, and any other similar organizations, and to
work together with them where it makes sense or compete
with them where that makes sense. 

Really, all I was trying to do was raise awareness because
people in the ISP business often seem to have blinders on
with respect to change in the world in which they operate.

--Michael Dillon