A Simple Question of Timing

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Something that I've missed in all the detailed discussions, which certainly
would add perspective:

    When does NSF funding for address registration end, or has it?

    Is there any "short-term" funding by NSI, subsidized by domain
registration?

    Does IANA have any contingency plans if Internic ceases operations but
ARIN is not agreed to?

There's a lot of discussion here about how the process _ought_ to work.
But in my mind, there is an even more critical issue:

    If ARIN does not "launch," whatever that means, when will it become
impossible to get new address space (in the "Internic" service area) other
than from the IANA or by assignments from previously allocated blocks?


This is not meant to suggest that we should charge ahead and adopt the
current ARIN proposal.  But it is an attempt to get a better idea of the
urgency of the process.