[NAIPR] ARIN Proposal

[Michael Dillon]

On Sat, 25 Jan 1997, Stephen Satchell wrote:

> Indeed, why should the Board of Advisors get into the act?  Do we *really*
> need the Electorial College?)

I think there is a stronger case for using that model here than in
electing your country's president. For those who are not aware of what the
Electoral College is, in the USA Americans do NOT elect their president.
Instead, they elect members to an electoral college which then casts its
ballots for the president. The EC members are under no obligation to
support the candidate of the party whose support placed them in the
electoral college. Supposedly this would protect the country from an
populist leader who got a lot of votes but who was judged to be unstable
by more thoughtful people. Someone like Russia's Zhirinovskiy.

In the case of ARIN it is essential that the people running the
organization understand the technical aspects of routing and IP address
allocation. This is true even if router technology changes or BGP routing
falls out of use on the global network. The main reason this is necessary
is that ARIN is not really a servant of its members. It must conform to
international IP allocation standards because it is merely one amongst 
three IP allocation authorities and in time it will be one amongst five.
The BoT needs to maintain a balance between the external standards for
dealing with an international public resource and the needs of its
members. This is actually rather common among non-profit organizations.
There is a stated mission for the organization and the members are those
who support the mission and wish to influence how the mission is
accomplished. 

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