ARIN: Questions & Comments

[Michael Dillon]

On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Stephen Satchell wrote:

> independent of activitiy.  If you dump ARIN having to maintain
> IN-ADDR.ARPA, the need to get heavy-duty computers and connections goes
> away -- the only significant net activity would be applications and
> database look-ups.

No way. The education role of ARIN and the need to have ARIN's information
resources easily accessible to the public demands that they have good
Internet connections and sufficient computing horsepower to back them up.
Mind you, Computing horsepower is pretty cheap these days and you can get
a decent workstation for the same cost as one month's salary for a skilled
employee.

>      (By the way, that $117 was assuming that *all* members participated
> using traditional paper systems; the cost goes down further if you operate
> ARIN the same way as much of the Internet Society operates.)

Quite frankly, I would not want to mess with the way ARIN operates until
after it is established. We have the opportunity to move the existing
operation out of Network Solutions with the employees and procedures
intact and to attempt to change any of this at the outset risks disrupting
the services that ARIN will provide. Down the road, maybe we can make a
lot of improvements and I would expect the Advisory Council to take a
close look at this. However, the initial budget should not assume any
such changes.

>      I might add that I'm still waiting to see a strawman budget.  Kim has
> been a bit gun-shy about presenting it because of what happened when the
> first draft of the proposal was posted.  I find that interesting, though,
> because I don't remember getting a lot of heat when I presented my
> alternate budget proposal.  Maybe because I'm not "offical", eh?  :)

Exactly! I think a lot of people on this list have shown that they aren't
interested in solving the problem and only want to attack what they
perceive as the big bad authority figures. 


Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-250-546-3049
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