Reject the NAIPR

[Michael Dillon]

On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Bob Van Cleef wrote:

> > Maybe the web page didn't make it very clear, but the context of this list
> > has certainly made it clear that the suggested pricing is only a first
> > draft proposal.
>
> But Michael, the web page is the only standard against which comments can
> be made.  Especially in light of the fact that many, clear and focused questions
> that have been posted to this mail list have been ignored, answered off-line, or
> dismissed with a hand-wave.  Dredging through back e-mail is not acceptable.

I agree with everything you say here. But the fundamental problem is that
IP allocation is a technical activity and the people who do it are not
skilled politicians. That's why I think we should cut them a lot more
slack. Especially since they have said that they put this before the
public for community input, i.e. their timeframe is to have an independent
registry running in April and it is only January right now.

And while there is ample ammunition to criticize them for their political
skills I don't think it is terribly productive because I don't think we
want them to be better politicians.

The people who have been firing postshots at the people and the proposal
have simply got to grow up and realize that this is a public process in
which they *MUST* either put up or shut up. There is no man behind the
curtain, no big brother, no overreaching government authority who will
tell us how to do things. This is our ball game, we set the rules and
those rules are for us, not for someone else. Since it is an international
venue, there is no government authority at all, period. In particular
the actions of AOP are reprehensible in the way they roused their members
to criticize this democratic process because the AOP executive seemingly
has never taken the time to learn how the Internet works even though it
has been a couple of years since they shifted their focus from BBS sysops
to ISP's.

If this group of people on this mailing list cannot come to a rough
consensus on how the IP allocation function for North America can be moved
into the hands of the private sector, then there will be no ARIN. It's
that simple.

My advice to anyone who has a criticism of the next draft ARIN proposal is
to never shoot down any point for which you cannot at least provide a
written rationale and, ideally, and alternative scenario or alternative
wording. This list is not for trashing proposals, it's for creating
proposals. In particular, many of the criticisms were both virulent and
vague. The writers seemed to assume that we should all just magically
understand where they are coming from. However, if they truly want to
represent their constituency, they will have to spell out where they are
coming from so that all of us can understand and appreciate their
position.

And if we can all get on with that sort of productive work then I would
expect the individuals involved to to answer more questions in public and
we can fully see and participate in the process for working out the next
draft and the next and so on until we have a final consensus.

> Based on my experience with things of this ilk, updating and expanding the web
> page should be "job one."  And not just for Kim, who I suspected is under
> excessive pressure as is, but by a dedicated team of "volunteers" from the
> core team of those who claim to understand what is going on.

Definitely. It is asking too much of Kim to do a full time job running the
current registry and then to also do the whole job of hashing out ARIN.
I'd like to point out that in a similar recent process run by the IAHC,
they had a person who was acting as librarian and webmaster to ensure
that their website was up to date. Even if it involves paying a
subcontractor, this would probably be a good idea. For instance there is
an ARIN FAQ that is still not on the website and the mailing list archive
is still not available at ftp://rs.internic.net/archives/NAIPR/ although a
decent web archive would be a better idea and make it more accessible to
most people.

Nevertheless, I really cannot cast the blame on anyone. These are much
harder problems to deal with than they appear at first because there is no
organization to handle them when we are at the stage of trying to form a
new organization.

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