Rebuttal to Mr. Weisberg's insinuations Re: Important News from Don Telage about ARIN

[Robert T. Nelson]

On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Gordon Cook wrote:

> I am not sure what Eric Weisberg thought he was accomplishing by this
> post. I am sure that he did succeed in causing me to loose respect for his
> modus operandi.
> 
[SNIP]

> 
> It seems to me sir that not having gotten what your client wants by way of
> address assignments, you are now determined to use the public lists of the
> internet to do whatever you can to undermine the credibility of those
> involved with the IP allocation process. I have seen other folk advocate
> the use of lawyers to whip the internet in shape. It has failed up to this
> point and I think it will continue to fail. You appear to me to believe
> differently. That is your prerogative.

In the FWIW department, this is precisely what has been seen on the
nair-founders at texoma.net mailing list. I, along with some 30-50 other
people were invited to become founding members of North American Internet
Registry. (We were subscribed to this distribution list without our
consent.) When I questioned the folks at Internet Texoma (texoma.net) what
their (NAIR's) purpose was, I was told "that will be decided by democratic
process".

What later became clear, is that Internet Texoma feels that it has been
wronged by the IP Address Assignment policies, and desires to do anythin
possible to force anyone who can to give them globally routeable address
space. I don't belive that their customer-base is sufficient to permit
such an assignment (though I do not know for sure)

Several prolific writers on mail-lists and USENet have tossed their hats
into the ring with the Texoma folks, including Jim Fleming, and Jeff
Walker. 

This group seems to feel that Jon Postel is the dictator of the Internet,
and everything that goes across his desk becomes part of a general
conspiracy by IANA/NSI/IAHC//ARIN to make the Internet their personal
fiefdom. This is also virtually the same group detracting from the
discussion over DNS issues.

I would like to suggest to the folks at Internet Texoma and NAIR that they
become fully aware of the bodies and policies that affect their business,
and attempt to use them to their advantage before they decide that "It's
bullshit, and a conspircay to take money out of my pocket". 

Because most of the founding members of NAIR are given to responding to
messages on the Net BEFORE they have read and digested them, NAIR is
doomed to be regarded as irrelevant by the rest of the Internet. Because
they only seem to try to derail progress of Internet Development, instead
of working *with* the Internet Community, they will go down not as Leader
of the Internet Community (ala Vint Cerf/Vixie/Postel/) but as detractors
from the common good (ala AlterNIC)

I hope that Vaden, Weisberg, Fleming, Walker, etc think carefully about
these points, and perhaps they might find people more williing to listen
to their ideas. 


Robert Nelson, President
INTERNOC (tm)
the internetwork operating company, inc.
+1.210.299.4662
rnelson at internoc.com