[NAIPR] ARIN Proposal

[Michael Dillon]

On Fri, 24 Jan 1997 Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:

> a requirement that prohibits a startup ISP from multihoming until
> they grow (when not multihoming is a competitive weakness), is
> an unfair restraint of free trade.

This may well be an issue in the USA now that the IP allocation function
is no longer perceived as a government function funded by the NSF but is
perceived as a private consortium function.

> "ARIN will allocate a /19 to an ISP, even if their current requirements
> only warrant a /22, if the ISP submits a business plan indicating
> a move to multihoming within the next ?? months".

That should be "reserve" not allocate. And the reservation would need a
time limit on it after which the reserved space could be allocated to
someone else. There would need to be more than just a business plan but
also some solid basis in fact such as bank loan documents, signed P.O.'s
for routers and other equipment, signed customer contracts, etc. You can't
just do this based on somebody's nice looking document. This is not an
easy problem to solve because as you may know, the vast majority of new
business startups fail within the first year. ISP's have not been
following that rule of thumb for a while now because of some very unique
circumstances. But the times they are a-changing and we are getting into a
more normal situation where people with big plans run around trying to
get a business to fly and end up flopping. The rules can't be based on the
aberrations of the past 3 years.

However, Jerry does have a point about separating the issues of forming
ARIN and tweaking the rules for IP allocation. The rules can be tweaked at
any time after ARIN is formed and it is likely that the participation of a
larger number of North American ISP's will cause some changes. I think
Jerry is trying to point out that tweaking the rules isn't on the critical
path to privatizing ARIN, but working out the control structure and the
fee structure is on the critical path so it is best to do that first.

In addition, some of the issues that you raised might be better discussed
on the NANOG mailing list (or at a NANOG meeting). http://www.nanog.org
for more info on both. And for those ISP's who have plans to become
multihomed but are not yet familiar with defaultless routing, BGP, etc.
it might be a good idea to take in the BGP tutorial the day before the
Feb 10-11 NANOG meeting in San Francisco. Also, review the mailing list
archives and NANOG meeting minutes at the website.

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