[ppml] Can the RIRs bypass the IETF and do their own thing?

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> If the draft RFC was resurrected

> Would you still think this was an end-run on the RIR process?
> 
> Would you be in support of the draft moving forward?

Seems to me that if the draft is not resurrected, there are no ULA
addresses for ARIN or RIPE to register, regardless of anything that ARIN
or RIPE members might desire.

> If you prefer the RIR process, would you be in favor of a global
policy
> submitted to ARIN that had the provisions of the expired ULA-central
> draft, with the modification of removing "cental authority" and
clearly
> designating how IANA should divide the space among the existing RIRs?

Seems to me that the NRO requires that identical policies be PASSED by
all of the RIRs before they can be considered "global policy". This is
an area where it makes a whole lot of sense to have discussions on
several RIR mailing lists before ANY policy proposal is submitted to ANY
of the 5 RIRs.

I'm not going to quibble with the wording of the draft at this point. I
just wonder whether it is appropriate for the RIR mailing lists to be
used as a working group for writing Internet drafts? It seems to be a
stupid way to proceed because there are at least 5 different mailing
lists involved, one of which is primarily in Spanish. Crossposting is
not a solution.

If people are serious about this central ULA concept then they should
get ONE of the RIRs to set up a working group (RIPE would be my first
choice, ARIN second) and then have all of this discussion in that
working group mailing list. People from all of the 5 RIRs should be
invited to the working group by official RIR postings to whatever lists
are appropriate. Some RIRs have announcement lists for such things or
members-only lists to ensure that the word gets out. Then draft the
document in your ONE SINGLE mailing list discussion, submit it to the
IETF, and only then, after an agreed draft is formally in the IETF
pipeline, submit your global policy proposals to each of the RIRs.

The way this is being done right now is pure madness and I would expect
that the RIR boards will reject any policies that arise through this
UNFAIR AND DISJOINTED process. We have always allowed the IETF to take
first place when it comes to creating new number resources. There is no
good reason to change this for so-called central-ULA addresses. We do
need the technical expertise that is in the IETF to review this before
we can make any kind of policy decisions about a registry for these
addresses. 

I know many people on the RIR policy lists are technical experts, but
that doesn't count, because these are policy lists, not technical ones.
It is one thing for a few technical people to convince a large number of
non-technical people about a topic. It is another thing entirely, for
those few technical people to convince the large number of technical
people who participate in the IETF. It seems to me that the promoters of
central-ULA are trying to bypass the IETF's technical review process and
I don't like this.

--Michael Dillon