AOP Notification

[Michael Dillon]

On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Dave McClure wrote:

> You can form AntiNICs to your heart's content, but so what?  Control of
> North American IP addresses and fees for the same will still be under
> the control of ARIN, which will be controlled by select group of
> self-perpetuating Trustees. 

Nope. Control of North American IP addresses has always rested with the
network operators who run the core mesh of the Internet. If this group
gets disgusted with ARIN, they can and will form an AntiNIC and ARIN will
become irrelevant dregs of history. At this point in time, the reason that
the registries (RIPE, APNIC and InterNIC) appear to have some control is
because they are basically fair and basically do a good job of IP
allocations so the network operators are quite content to accept them as
the final decision point for IP allocations.

> Note that under the current proposal, the Board of Trustees will elect
> new trustees from among candidates proposed by an Advisory Council.  The
> Advisory Council will, itself, be selected by the Board of Trustees. 
> That's a closed loop that provides for no direct input from the members
> of ARIN. 

You simply have not been doing your research. Before writing such an
inaccurate statement you could have very easily checked out the proposal
at http://www.arin.net where you would have discovered that your statement
is just plain wrong:

    It is expected that the initial Advisory Council will develop
    procedures to fill vacancies on the Council.  These procedures, as
    envisioned, would allow ARIN's membership to elect future Advisory
    Council members.

> Who would you complain to?  No one, since ARIN is accountable to no one
> but its own Board of Trustees.  How would you protest?  Refuse to pay
> the fees?  You'd only lose the ability to get IP addresses.

You are stretching it pretty thin here. You can only pile up so many 
"if"'s before you have nothing left but air and vapor. ARIN will not exist
in a vacuum. The BoT will be subject to the laws governing non-rpofit
organizations. They will be subject to the disapproval of their fee-paying
members. And they have to operate within the context of the Internet
community which contains several other power centers such as the IETF,
ISOC, the network operators. There is no point pretending that ARIN could
become another OPEC cartel because it just can't happen.

> This is an imperfect proposal that is being discussed on a single
> listserv of about 300 people.  

No. It's been discussed on several other mailing lists as well. The people
that are on this list are the self-selected group that is interested
enough to be involved in the niggly details of getting ARIN off the
ground. Let's not criticise those people who have decided that their views
are adequately represented by others on this list so that they need not
join in themselves.

> That's better than none, but what is the
> mechanism to approve this proposal?  A vote by this listserv?  While
> there are many knowledgeable people of high integrity here, they hardly
> constitute a consensus.  And I have yet to see any proposal for a vote
> on this proposal by any of the standards bodies extant to the Internet. 

This does not concern the standards bodies so there is no point in having
them here other than as interested individuals. As far as making the final
decision, I'm surprised that as a director of the AOP you do not
understand how this type of decision is usually made by informed
consensus. In addition, the very nature of a non-profit corporation means
that a small group of people sign the incorporation documents and form the
group of founding members and board of directors.

P.S. Since you seem to have little understanding of how the Internet
     works, may I suggest that you review the material in the reading
     list at http://www.arin.net as well as the discussion list archives
     available at the same URL. You will find a lot of tutorial
     information in these sites that will help you to make more 
     informed comments in the future. Right now I'm not sure why
     you are even interested in this list since ARIN is likely to
     have zero effect on the BBS sysops who constitute the AOP's
     membership.

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