[arin-ppml] ARIN-2012-3: ASN Transfers - Last Call

[Tom Vest]

On May 8, 2012, at 9:27 AM, David Farmer wrote:

> On 5/7/12 20:25 CDT, William Herrin wrote:
>> On 5/7/12, Owen DeLong<owen at delong.com>  wrote:
>>> On May 7, 2012, at 2:29 PM, William Herrin wrote:
>>>> If you want the community to own the policies then a non-trivial
>>>> amount of dissent means you keep discussing it. That's the nature of
>>>> consensus and if you want the disparate members of the community to
>>>> engage as ARIN's partners in address management, that's what it takes.
>>> 
>>> While having true consensus would be ideal, it's not always feasible.
>>> In some cases, the AC has to weigh whether failing to move a proposal
>>> with significant support forward would do a greater harm than continuing
>>> to discuss it.
>> 
>> Hi Owen,
>> 
>> Would failing to move an AS transfer proposal forward this cycle do
>> harm? We've survived without one for 15 years and we're not sort of AS
>> numbers, at least not the 32 bit variety.
> 
> Bill,
> 
> You and others have mostly convinced me that we should hold off and bring this one back to the next policy meeting.  However, I have a fear that we are going to be right back where we are today in 5 to 6 months after the Dallas PPM.  I really don't want to repeat what happened with IPv4 transfers, were the more we discussed this issue the more the community polarized and fractured.
> 
> How does the community come to a stronger consensus one way or the other?  There are really only a few minor tweaks that have been proposed to the text and no one has said that those change would fundamentally change their support one way or the other.  So, I don't think here are changes to the text that will significantly change the consensus.
> 
> This is a major change and I think most everyone agrees that it is, this is why I believe it is OK to take a little more time. You are right, there should be no rush to make this change.  However, how does the community use the extra time you are advocating for in a constructive manner?  How does the community develop a stronger consensus one way or the other?  Is more time going to accomplish that?
> 
> If my fears are correct and we don't succeed in producing a stronger consensus either way, would you advocate a third policy cycle?  Is the dissent strong enough and significant enough to block this proposal, even though it seems that a strong majority supports the proposal?
> 
> John is right consensus isn't unanimity; I've been doing some reading on consensus based decision making, paradoxically, dissent is part of a healthy consensus.
> The lack of dissent can be "evidence of intimidation, lack of imagination, lack of courage, failure to include all voices, or deliberate exclusion of the contrary views," rather than actual consensus.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making
> 
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If the only compelling, and unequivocally consensus-supported near-term requirement with respect to ASNs is accommodating bankruptcy-related transfers, may I suggest that we immediately develop a separate proposal that is explicitly limited to ASN transfers in that specific context? I suspect that the pursuit of consensus would be easier, and the results clearer, if options for handling "involuntary" transfers, ala bankruptcy, were separated from policies covering voluntary/strategic ASN transfer interests. It's an empirical question -- but I assume there are ways to gauge whether and how the distribution of opinions on ASN transfers would change given the option of addressing "involuntary" vs. "voluntary" transfers separately...?

TV