AOP Notification

[Michael Dillon]

On Sat, 1 Feb 1997, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> (As an aside, I am somewhat concerned that two of the proposed BoT members
> are employees of NSI -- this has nothing to do with them personally --

I think that the question of these two BoT members needs to be publicly
addressed on this list.

Many of us expect that Kim Hubbard will fill the executive director
position in ARIN which is a management role, i.e. she would be an
employee. If this is so then one would normally expect her to hold an
ex-officio position on the BoT, i.e. be a non-voting member. This might
ordinarily be a simple matter of clarification, however Scott Bradner,
another proposed BoT member did say something about the BoT using
consensus to make its decisions and I have yet to see it explained how
this can be reconciled with a non-voting member.

But an even more important conflict, IMHO, exists with Donald Telage's
position on the BoT. Since one of the reasons for creating ARIN is to
separate the two NIC functions of domain name registration and IP address
allocation, I feel that it is not wise to appoint the CEO of the world's
largest commercial domain name registry to the BoT of ARIN. Since the
cooperative agreement between the NSF and Network Solutions Inc. runs for
another year after the proposed creation date for ARIN, there is clearly a
conflict here. And since Network Solutions Inc. has not announced any
intention to cease offering domain name registry services after the NSF
agreement ends, I am assuming that they will continue to operate as part
of the commercial global domain name registry system. I'm not sure how
best to resolve this conflict. Obviously, Mr. Telage could withdraw from
accepting the position, but if there is some good reason why the CEO of
Network Solutions must be involved in ARIN then perhaps a way could be
found to recognize that involvement without placing him in a voting
position on the Board of Trustees. 

I am afraid that if the public, especially the Internet Service Provider
community, does not perceive ARIN as being a clean break from Network
Solutions Inc., it will lead to unecessary political wrangling and take
energy away from the job that ARIN should be focussing on. 

Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-250-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com