[ppml] Re: Independent space from ARIN

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

This NANOG thread is bringing up some stuff that we really do need to deal 
with...

On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 08:58:09PM -0400, Jeff McAdams wrote:
> 
> Either ARIN's policies are screwed up beyond even what I thought to
> begin with, or their communications with customers/ISPs/whatever is
> absolutely pitiful.  Most likely, both.

>From what I've seen, 1% of the ARIN using population knows how ARIN works 
and how to get what they want, and 99% of the ARIN using population lives 
in either a) fear of dealing with ARIN for things that they technically 
qualify for, and/or b) utter loathing and hatred from past experiences.

Unfortunately, the people who are capable of changing things are the ones
who fall into the 1% category, hence they never see the problem or need. 
The "public policy" forums like ARIN-PPML don't help matters either, as
any form of common sense seems to be drowned out amongst the net kooks and
other wackjobs.

Meanwhile, the 99% category sits around wondering about things like:

* Why does the ARIN email system takes an hour just to generate an
  auto-acknowledgment?

* Why does it take days, and sometimes many days, to process a form and at
  the very least get a simple YAY or NAY on the syntax so you can continue
  submitting without finding out 99 forms later that your first form had a
  typo and invalidated all the rest.

* Why does it seem like no human touches a form until after 4PM Eastern?

* Why does the theoretically automated form processing for things like 
  SWIPs still take over an hour to get a YAY or NAY email through.

* Why does it take a week to process a payment?

* Why have I NEVER been able to submit an ARIN request without receiving
  a response asking for information I included in the original request.

* Why do we have to submit to the equivalent of an IP anal probe, and 
  cough up extremely detailed documentation on network architectures and
  the use of every IP address.

* Why any of this "police state" is necessary given that the shortage of
  IPv4 addresses seems to be artifically created. There are still tons of
  IP addresses that are either unallocated, unreasonably allocated (hey
  Merit, lets see your documentation on 35.0.0.0/8 :P), or long dead and
  never reclaimed. Only 32% of the available IPv4 space is being 
  announced, where is the shortage?

* Why do we have to pay very large sums of money ($2500+ per year at a 
  minimum) for this wonderful IP policing service. Where in the heck does
  all that money go?

* Why are we expected to continue the status quo of paying thousands of
  dollars for addresses in IPv6? Without the threat of an artifical 
  shortage to "manage", what possible reason is there to justify ARIN's
  existance or fees? Why do we all get the feeling IPv6 isn't an end to
  the expenses, but rather a vast new market of registration and renewal
  fees?

* http://www.arin.net/library/corp_docs/budget.html - Where does the $1M
  in "fringe benefits" go? Where does the extra $1.5M in revenue go? Why
  does ARIN need to spend so much in travel, etc?

* Why does ARIN have no problem assigning large blocks of unallocated 
  space (usually 2x or more) around a new "customer" to accomodate for
  future growth, but have policies preventing ISPs from doing the same
  (aka 80% utilization for more space).

* Etc etc etc, not counting the problems that have already been mentioned.

Yes, if you take the time to try and figure out what goes on inside the
minds of ARIN, you'll find that some of the people actually do try to be
useful human beings. But most of us don't have the time or desire to do
that, we just want a system that works. I don't think the current system 
meets anyone's standard for useful, efficient, or cost effective.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)