ARIN: Questions & Comments

[William Herrin]

Howdy,

  I've been following the list for a couple weeks now, and I have a few
questions and comments about the current ARIN proposal. Some of these may be
FAQs I missed before joining the list... If so, then I missed it so please
fill me in.

The questions first:

  I'm uncertain as to what the disposition of the address space currently
registered with Network Solutions will be. Will they be moved under ARIN's
dominion, and be subject to the $50/yr for each non-contiguous assignment,
or will they remain under network solution's control? For example, we
currently have 199.33.224.0/23. How will the authority over that space
change, and what fees will be assessed as a result over the next few years?

  If understand the proposal correctly, then the former is true. This means
that ARIN would have a complete lock on IP address allocation in the
Americas (you either get your address space from ARIN or from someone who
got it from ARIN). Additionally, you must pay for each allocation, and if
you potentially want to have any say in how much you pay then you have to
pay an additional $1000 for
"membership." Fair or not, this sounds remarkably similar to monopoly
price-fixing. Has anyone given any thought to how this will interact with
the US Anti-trust laws?

And the comments:

  The notion that the initial board of trustees and initial advisory council
will determine how their successors are chosen is a crock. This needs to be
firmly decided up front, regardless of how trustworthy the initial board may
or may not be.

  ARIN needs to have a core set of directives that cannot be modified by the
board of trustees and advisory council alone. Changing these core directives
should require the approval of the general membership. Its a law of nature:
absolute power corrupts absolutely, and without such checks even a
trustworthy board is likely to become preoccupied with dinners, meetings and
technical trivia, the results of which would be very expensive for those of
us footing the bill.

  ARIN needs to build and maintain a well defined cash reserve. Daniel
Karrenberg mentioned this in passing, but I want to emphasize it. The
Internet is unpredictable, and when (not if) budgeting mistakes are made
there needs to be a buffer that allows ARIN to continue operating
effectively until changes in the fee structure can be made. Ideally the NSF
or Network Solutions should contribute the initial reserve, but if not then
I think most of us ISPs will understand and support the higher initial fees
necessary to build it.

  Speaking of the fee structure, creating fixed dollar amounts strikes me as
a mistake. The fees collected from each activity should be expressed as a
percentage of ARIN's budget, and on a particular day each year, an accountet
should sit down and combine that percentage with the projected activities
and budget in order to determine the next year's fees. Accountants are
roughly as intelligible as lawyers, so tying the fees to the costs is really
the only way that we can be sure ARIN is really acting like a non-profit
organization (i.e. isn't gouging us.)

  While I've no doubt that the consortium of individuals and organizations
who can afford ARIN's $1000 membership fee would have my best interests at
heart, I really think it should be handled differently. Restricting the day
to day operations to a few people (the board and advisory council) makes
practical sense, but the general membership should include everyone that
contributes so much as a nickel to the effort. Personally, I'm in favor of a
US House/Senate model to the extent that:

1) A quorum of the folks coughing up cash for ARIN would be required to make
core changes to ARIN's policies and directives.
2) An affirmative vote would require the majority both of the entities
participating in ARIN and of the entity-dollars.

  Anyway, those are my thoughts as such. Anyone have comments or better yet,
answers?

-Bill Herrin
Why? InterNetworking
--
William D. Herrin                 herrin at why.com herrin at ultima.cms.udel.edu 
Why? InterNetworking             wherrin at gmu.edu herrin at scienza.onr.navy.mil
3005 Crane Dr.                Fallible_Dragon at udic.org  webmaster at crosslink.net
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004          Web:  <http://www.why.com/~herrin/>