Democracy and InterNIC/APNIC/RIPE-NCC

[John LeRoy Crain]

Hi Larry,


 Larry Vaden <vaden at texoma.net> writes:

 * At 11:38 PM 7/17/97 -0500, Robert T. Nelson wrote:
 
<SNIP>

 * 
 * After more than 200 years of democracy in the US, I would think most people
 * in the US are comfortable enough with the democratic process to take more
 * than "a step in the right direction".  You hear the ARIN "taper into
 * democracy" thing on TV every once in a while - some country's dictator
 * proposing democratic elections some time in the future.


I agree that US citizens know what their version of democracy is.
However electing someone to represent the citizens only works when you
have citizens. ARIN does not yet have members, so who gets to vote.

Who is going to decide this? Who is going to contact all the people
with an interest in the Inet, As you don't have members yet, not only
in the US, ARIN is not a registry for the USA only, but in south
American countries other ARIN regions?

To take a vote you first need to define who the voters are. I would
suggest that the ARIN proposal clearly points to the fact that the
"members" will get a say in what happens. 

First you need the members and to get them ARIN needs to exist before
hand. 

<SNIP>

 * There are multiple registries now - APNIC, NSI/InterNIC, RIPE.  The
 * coordinating body is the IANA.
 * 
 * APNIC and RIPE have a policy of allocating /19s to small ISPs.  InterNIC
 * does not.
 * 
 * Why?  Is IANA|Internic of the opinion APNIC or RIPE are wrong in their
 * policy to allocate /19s to small ISPs?
 * 


IANA|InterNIC? 

I assume you just mean the InterNIC. 

IANA has the same role for APNIC and RIPE-NCC as it does for InterNIC.


I think you have to look at some of the controlling mechanisms in the
way that the different registries decide who they can give service to.
In all three Regional Registries not being able to get service from
the Regional Registry normally means going to your upstream IPv4 source.


RIPE NCC may only give IP numbers to ,or via, it's member registries.
To become such a registry there are fees and responsibilities involved.
It does not matter if you are an ISP or a greengrocer, we just have
registries. Of course we don't have many greengrocers wishing to
be Local Internet Registries:-)


The initial /19 a registry would get is what we call an allocation and
can be routed to the Global Internet. The Registry can not give out
the addresses for use by their customers without approval for each
individual network.

At a certain point the Registry, having shown itself to be responsible
and to understand the criteria for assigning IPv4 addresses, is weaned
off of the support from the NCC.  This can be a long process and takes
commitment of time and resources by member registries.


More details on policies can be found on our web-site.

<http:/www.ripe.net/docs/ripe-140.html>


APNIC has similar counterbalances to deter non-serious applicants.
If we didn't have these everybody we come to the Regionals and
we would suffer melt down of our resources within a very short time
period.


InterNIC has no such counterbalances. Therefor, by neccesity, they
operate by a slightly different set of criteria.


ARIN is a proposal that can solve some of the problems that people
have with the InterNIC. The proposed structure is in many ways similar
to that of the RIPE-NCC and APNIC.

Control from the bottom up but still allowing the people to do the
work they need to get done.

ARIN is an opportunity for the Internic/NSI solution to be replaced
with a system that will also allow for the bottom-up approach.

A control from bottom-up is something that everyone seems to agree is
needed. There is an opportunity here to achieve this. If people are
willing to let ARIN be setup and to "trust", a word that people have
difficulty with;-), those who have the task of getting things going to
do just that, then it can work.


Kind regards,


John Crain
RIPE NCC
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These are my personal opinions, they do not necessarily reflect those
of my employees and the organisation for which I work.
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