Let's just go around in circles, shall we?

[Stephen Satchell]

At 12:19 PM 2/3/97, Michael Dillon wrote:
>On Mon, 3 Feb 1997 Valdis.Kletnieks at VT.EDU wrote:
>
>> I fully agree with that statement.  However, could somebody
>> please elucidate to me what ARIN's legal exposure is in giving
>> out a prefix longer than /19, when they know that *current* practice
>> will render it unrouted from many locations?
>
>How could there possibly be any legal exposure when ARIN issues a
>disclaimer that receiving a globally unique IP address block from them
>does not guarantee any sort of routability? Didn't you notice Scott
>Bradner's message about the IP address blocks used for testing equipment?
>Or SAP's use of globally unique addresses that never hit the net? The
>registries give out unique addresses whether you want to use them on the
>public Internet or not.


This is a clarification of an issue I didn't grok until now -- thanks.

It and some other messages over the past few days, though, contradicts
something that was said when I posted my back-of-the-envelope budget
proposal.  (Kim, are you planning to post a budget soon to the Web site?)
I had allowed for some clerks and a "Fixit" guy, but very little technical
talent.  I was flamed that ARIN needed network engineers for some unknown
purpose.  I took it that those engineers ($60K/year and up base salary, or
about $200K/year fully burdened) were to make sure that the address issued
would "follow the rules" such that it could be routed -- assuming that the
address block being allocated was intended for global publication.

"NO", said a number of people, "ARIN can't guarantee anything."

So why the high-priced bodies?