YOUR KIDDING RIGHT?

[David R. Conrad]

Jeff,

>DR>The problem is that
>DR>the subsidies that have funded the IP allocation and registration
>DR>service are going away
>
>That's not what some folks are arguing in here.  Certain folks are
>saying the main thrust of this proposal is to manage address space,

Perhaps that's what they are arguing here, but that is *NOT* what ARIN is
about.  ARIN is a proposal to fund the Americas registry.  THERE ARE NO
PROPOSED CHANGES IN ADDRESS MANAGEMENT AS A RESULT OF ARIN.  To be sure, as
a result of the fees, there may be a realignment as providers unwilling or
unable to obtain address space from ARIN go to their upstream provider for
addresses, but I do not believe this is a primary goal.

>If you are correct, then the question becomes how
>much funding is being lost ?  Folks are throwing around all kinds of
>numbers for creating a new organization, do we know what it currently
>costs ?

Last I heard, the total amount of money NSF was paying InterNIC (before
they got out) was around $2 million/year.

>Lastly, if I understand the proposal correctly, Network
>Solutions are the ones who currently fund this function (with subsidies
>from other sources) and under the new proposal ARIN becomes a subsidiary
>of Network Solution, not a standalone entity ?

No.  ARIN would be independent of NSI.  NSI is simply providing the funding
backstop until ARIN becomes established.

>I can't believe that the current charges for domain registrations aren't
>enough to fund the NIC.

Separating Internet address allocation from the morass of domain name
allocation is one of the features of ARIN.

>I can believe they have major billing and
>accounting problems; having just experienced them myself. This to me is
>at the heart of the management problem I was referring to.

And I suspect it is entirely related to the load resulting from DOMAIN
NAME DELEGATIONS as opposed to address allocations -- remember: people
aren't billed for address allocations.

Regards,
-drc