[ppml] RIR shopping -- AND MORE

[Bill Woodcock]

      On Sun, 2 Mar 2003, Randy Bush wrote:
    > i think you (not sure about arin actually) pay too much attention to
    > defending against all us nasty lying members.  i think that address
    > allocation policies affect the *global* routing tables, and inter-rir
    > coordination on policy is very important.

I tend to agree, and tend to favor simplification, decriminalization, and
harmonization, probably in that order.

Simplification: I don't think that a profusion of very-specific rules
which are intended to proscribe the behavior of both the members and the
IP analysts actually benefit us.  It's getting quite bad in both the ARIN
and RIPE regions.

Decriminalization: Any rules which most members have to circumvent, or
which are unenforceable, probably shouldn't be on the books.  There's no
sense in having an organization of people who are united principally by
their failure to abide by the rules of the organization.

Harmonization: There are four, and Murphy willing, will be five RIRs.
There is a growing class of operators who have to operate in all regions.
If all of the RIRs run around creating wildly divergent policy, as has
been happening lately, it becomes a terrible mess to manage.  Since we
have to abide by an RIR's subdelegation policies with respect to customers
in that region, we now have to have divergent _internal_ policies with
respect to otherwise-identical customers, or even with respect to
_different offices of the same customer_.  That's abhorrent.

                                -Bill