[ppml] Revising Centrally Assigned ULA draft

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 08:23:21AM +0100, michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
> By continuing this discussion in PPML instead of on the IETF WG list,
> you are helping to ensure that ULA-C becomes a reality. It would be
> better if you take this discussion to the IETF, so that PPML can focus
> on other work.

If you remember back a few years when ARIN had to provide input to
the IETF I was a rather strong objector to making it a "policy" to
provide input.  I believed then and now that ARIN needs a method
to "speak".  The issue at hand brings this up tenfold.

While I think it is valuable for members of the ARIN community to
participate in the IETF process there's no way for the IETF to know
that the members who do participate are representatives of the
community.  Directly, how does the IETF know that the people who
showed up aren't the kooks?

I think it is valuable to put the question "The ARIN community
supports the IETF's work on ULA-C" (or similar) to the membership,
determine consensus, and then have a way for ARIN to issue a statement
to the IETF that the ARIN community, as a whole is for or against
the concept.

In a message written on Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 04:06:47AM -0400, John Santos wrote:
> It's easy to shoot down a proposal if you just assume it says something
> it doesn't.

I wasn't addressing the proposal at all, I was addressing David Conrad's
interpretation of it, and most importantly his question of what would
happen if his view were to come true.

> ARIN is in the number administration business.  It is *not* in the
> routing business.  It doesn't route anything for anybody (except
> maybe itself.)

However, ARIN does have to keep the membership happy.  Your statement
would sound silly when put to any physical industry: BMW is in the
car building business.  It is *not* in the driving business.

There are alternatives to ARIN, although I don't think any are
particularly pretty.  Remember a few years ago when a number of
people were unhappy with the state of the DNS root, so they ran
their own roots with additional zones?  In theory that could happen
here.  If ISP's in the DFZ are unhappy enough with ARIN's policies
they could set up a new registry, all agree to use it, and poof,
ARIN is irrelevant.

While ARIN may not be in the routing business, virtually all of the
consumers of its output are, and so they care a lot that what ARIN
provides is useful for that purpose.  If ARIN were to allocate in
a way that was bad for the routing system the ISP's would revolt,
in the most extreme case by ignoring ARIN completely.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
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