[ppml] Re: Independent space from ARIN

[william at elan.net]

> I have 3 questions for William:
> 
> If this is not a policy issue, why are you posting to the Public Policy
> Mailing List? and not directing it to either the CEO of ARIN, one of his
> Directors, or the BoT?
I'm not certain that there is any other public mailing list at ARIN that 
this can be discussed on and its not 100% certain to me that operational
issues can or can not be solved by policies.  

I rarely send private emails on issues related to public organizations.
I'v been told on multiple occasions before to send emails privately to 
members of AC if I have problems or suggestions, etc. I appreciate 
willingness to hear from public from those particular persons that showed 
such interest but that is not how I in particular work on things. I only 
send private emails to clarify something but anything of serious sort, 
any new ideas, etc. I'd bring up on ppml (on rare occasions I would "cc", 
but usually not even that). In part this is how I view that this sort of 
internet democracy is  supposed to work - things are issues are not 
supposed to be stay hidden, nor are they supposed to be entirely work of 
one or two persons - we have mailing lists to work on issues; and if 
this mailing list is not used - what good is it?

> Do you have unresolved requests with ARIN that you have followed through on
> IAW with Richard Jimmerson's guidance?
I have one. To me it was not of high priority, so I have not followed 
though on it as much as I might have if it was ip request, but the last 
word the issue has been heard from arin and as I said it was "we'll get 
back to you". I'll try to find that old email and check on this again.

> Do you have first hand knowledge of anyone following written policy and
> meeting published quidelines being rejected by ARIN?
I'd like to know here what are "published guidelines" and why you 
separated them from "written policy"?

But to answer question, I'v knowledge of organizations that got NAYs for 
what I do not see as something that is not inline with written policies. 
I'v assisted them futher getting through to ARIN and succeed. Somebody 
might not have if they did not read all the policies. The last case I was 
involved in was year ago.

> If so it would be nice to see since all I have seen posted are vague
> references to unidentified issues.
They are not vague references. I'v encountered problems with how ARIN puts 
walls on handling requests each time, I have heard it from many others. 
These problems have been brought up on mailing lists other then ARIN (and 
never actually by me) with people seeking suggestions and help on what to 
do as far as handling ARIN requests and how to get through to them, etc.

And to be precise my email did not have any "references" to issues, 
my email only had suggestions to do futher research on how people like 
dealing with arin and if they encounter any issues and what kind and then 
bring the results of this research up for discussion on how it can be solved. 
I even directly said in my post that what we see on mailing list as references
to problems are not enough to clearly establish what these are.

> I am not sure who you represent with your "we" but it is certainly not me or
> anyone else that I have spoken to at past meetings. 
Exactly!
The public meeting is no indication of ARIN membership or general public 
in american region that ARIN is saying its representing. This is main 
problem you and probably mosts others who are on AC or BoT have - you 
assume meeting its representative while in reality it is not.

I can tell you that organizations and persons who have problems with ARIN 
will not attend meeting like that, no do they even participate at ppml 
(though ppml is easier and so they can be pursuided to hang on here for a 
while, especially if they see their issue as being discussed) but some 
will tell about their problems if you let them, for example asking to do 
survey of how the their ARIN request went through (though many will ignore 
this as well, especially that there is general negative perception of 
ARIN, but if asked nice and make clear these ARIN is trying to deal with 
these issues, then many may answer the one-page questinaire who would 
otherwise not have been heard).

But since we're talking about meeting, for Las Vegas, while I'v been there 
I'v gone through list of participants and tried to find size & type
organizations they represent to get statistical idea of public meeting 
participations by groups. I'm not certain I'v kept that modified 
participants list (it was on old laptop) but if I find it I'll post 
reference to it here and I might try to do this again for last meeting. 
But the numbers I got were amazingly one-sided to me - showing no 
serious representation on the meeting from small & mid-sized isps that 
make greater majority of ARIN (about 3.5% for small isps and another 3% 
for mid-size if I remember) and these are the companies that encounter 
the most problems (somebody else posted that on this thread). 

And this fact has been totally ignored as far as I can tell when I pointed
it out, though on that meeting (shortly after it in private) I was specifially
told that BoT will not consider meeting to be representative and would instead 
consider mailing list to be representative. But afterwards in public I'v 
heard completely opposite view from other members of AC or BoT.

> represent them....if not, then stop wasting everyone's time. I also
> challenge you to run for the AC in the next election, that way your support
> can be measured and you can work from inside on fixing all these issues for
> everyone. 
I have considered and I could try to email companies I'v helped that are 
now members of ARIN and others I know to get their support and I might 
even be elected (probably not, but I'n not aftraid to try) but based on 
how AC works, I strongly suspect I would end up resigning after first 
meeting or at least I would not find that its possible to make any 
progress through AC either, so I see no serious reasons to be there.
And I also do not entirely agree with AC role, I do not believe it should 
be policy making body, but rather more of advisory of issues that ARIN 
staff can rely on when they need outside opinion or when outside opinions 
on operational issues need to be brough into ARIN.
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: william at elan.net [mailto:william at elan.net]
> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 4:20 AM
> To: ARIN Policy
> Subject: Re: [ppml] Re: Independent space from ARIN
> 
> 
> Lets try to summarize this thread....
> 
> The way I see is that many think there are various operational issues with
> ARIN (note - OPERATIONAL - something that may not be policy fixable).
> Some particular issues are listed in: 
> http://www.arin.net/mailing_lists/ppml/1521.html
> There is also perception of large portion of ARIN community that ARIN does 
> not help/address issues, does not properly use money collected, does not
> listen, etc, etc - bad public image.
> 
> So what we want is to:
>   Identify how serious these problems are (and on the way identify actual 
> issues...). This probably requires doing survey of people who have dealt 
> with ARIN recently and paying particular attention to those who have 
> not found it to be satisfactory. Also would require an easy way for 
> somebody to complain about problems (again probably survey-like web form).
>   It would be necessary to clearly identify issues, group them by general 
> areas and also identify issues that are most important and have to be 
> solved first.
>   For each issues way to approach and solve it have to be gathered from 
> suggestions from those who had problems, what ARIN staff sees how it can
> work on the issues and what other organizations have done, etc
>   This all have to be discussed at mailing list and some meeting. Things 
> like this can not be solved quickly and would require time to do some 
> kind of research on the issues which is more then just yelling from people 
> on ARIN and mentioing of problems on mailing lists and afterwards it would 
> time to actually decide how to fix things, but quicker we start, quicker the
> 
> problems can be fixed.
>   And also ARIN needs to work on its image (public relations?) along the 
> way letting people know it is listening and how.
> 
> Although I'm not big fan of the AC (don't think they have right ideas 
> on what they should do within ARIN and had been more of a problem), I do 
> not see any other larger constant group that can actually work on ARIN 
> operational problems (other then ARIN staff which many see as a problem). 
> So the way I see it is that AC should volunteer to look into ARIN
> operational
> issues and first of all work with ARIN to identify for certain what the 
> problems issues are (taking the thread from NANOG as a starting point).
> 
> So if AC is here and listening I think you should consider spending a lot 
> more time on the operational issues and problems and not bother going 
> after policy making (you're not parliment here) - leave that to people 
> actually making proposals. This is in fact what I see as proper role for 
> AC - identify ARIN operational problems and assist arin in solving them 
> (with new policy making being left to general community).
> 
> ----
> William Leibzon
> Elan Communications Inc. 
> william at elan.net