A Simple Question of Timing

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

>On Wed, 5 Feb 1997, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
>
>>     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?
>
>It will never become "impossible" to get IP address space. This is because
>if the ARIN proposal collapsed and NSI shut down their operation anyway
>the large NSP's could still make mutual agreements to route IP address
>blocks from currently unallocated space.

That's specifically what I meant by "assignments from previously allocated
blocks."

>However, I think it much more
>likely that if the above catastrophe occurred, 3 or 4 of the large NSP's
>would simply pony up some money to form a consortium and hire some of the
>current IP allocation people to continue the work. In other words, if you
>are looking for a downside here, there really isn't much of one since, as
>is normal in an anarchy, when a need is seen, someone will move to fill
>the need.

But I doubt that contingency plans are in place to do this immediately.  I
cannot help but think that at best, there might be a 30 day or longer
hiatus for new allocations.  Mind you, I also don't think this would be
catastrophic to the growth of the Internet, because the number of people
that need routable PI space is a small part of the total requests.

>
>While there is no big emergency to push ahead with ARIN in a big rush,
>there is also no need to waste time either. The timeframe suggested
>which would see ARIN become operational sometime in April, seems
>pretty reasonable and I sense that there are not a whole lot more
>objections to be overcome before an acceptable structure and bylaws
>are presented to the community.

I don't have a problem with this.  While I think there is a lot of flaming
going on, a certain level will never stop.  I do have concerns I have
voiced about the proposal and its lack of cost and process detail, but
these are not show-stoppers.


Howard