[arin-discuss] Team Cymru

[Paul Vixie]

> > 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.

ah.  ok.

> 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.

noting that ARIN cannot enter into such relationships exclusively, i agree.
(by exclusive, i mean, if others besides cymru also wanted to cooperate with
ARIN in this way, then ARIN would do so, on nondiscriminatory terms.)  if you
want to expand on the kind of cooperation you think would be beneficial here,
i am all ears.

> > (... 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.

that would be out of scope for the BoT, unless there were specific community
or membership requests for information or action that were going unanswered.
in other words, to the extent that the BoT is in charge of anything, the above
words ("work with ... or compete ... where it makes sense") would be somewhat
of a "standing order".

> 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.

as you can tell from my reply, i'm very interested in this general area.  as a
steward of public resources, ARIN walks a fine line between "do everything
that has to be done" and "do everything that nobody else can do" and "do
everything that nobody else is doing".  but never "do everything that can be
done".

as an example of something the RIRs could provide that nobody else could
provide, consider an IODEF forwarding service, where cooperating network
owners gave their RIR(s) a private entrance to a ticket system, and other
cooperating network owners had a private entrance to their RIR(s)' forwarding
system, so that complaints about network abuse could flow directly from
qualified cooperating network owners to other qualified cooperating network
owners.  noone but the RIRs could do this at the moment, though many attempts
have failed and many others are now failing, simply because only the RIRs know
for sure who should be allowed to speak for, and receive IODEF reports for, a
given network.  (RPKI could change that, and so, should also be explored.)

if you have examples of ways ARIN could cooperate with entities like cymru,
that leverage ARIN's unique capabilities to the advantage of the community,
i am as i said "all ears".