A Simple Question of Timing

[Michael Dillon]

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. 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.

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.

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