RE $50 Million NSF windfall??

[Jim Fleming]

On Wednesday, March 12, 1997 8:26 AM, Michael Dillon[SMTP:michael at MEMRA.COM] wrote:
@ On Wed, 12 Mar 1997, Mark Richmond wrote:
@ 
@ > All this, of course, leads us back to ARIN.  If NSI wants to drop number
@ > assignments, but loses the contract next year, who decides?  Do we go
@ > through all this as an exercise, then scrap it when the new regime takes
@ > over?  If there is a new regime . . . 
@ 
@ Nope. Once ARIN takes over IP allocation responsibilities for North
@ America it is permanent unless and until the ARIN members want to change
@ it. The US government has only one slender shred of a connection to this
@ activity now and the creation of ARIN will cleanly snip that connection.
@ 
@ After that point, what happens in the National Science Foundation is not
@ terribly relevant to IP allocations.
@ 
@ This may seem to be an overly strong statement coming from somone who is
@ not on the BoT, not on the FNC, not affiliated in any way with NSF or any 
@ US government activity. But I make this statement based on one single
@ simple fact. IP allocations need to be done based on topology and topology
@ does not pay attention to national borders. Most especially, topology does
@ not pay attention to the US-Canada border. If IP allocations policies are
@ to be primarily based on technical criteria then they must be done in an
@ international venue. This means that the agencies of a single government
@ really have no place at the table other than as observers or as peer
@ participants on equal footing with all other ARIN members.
@ 

Yes Michael, that is a strong statement from a Canadian
with apparently no concern for:

	1. The national defense of the U.S. I prefer not to go
		into those issues here but I assure you the
		are #1 and there is a distance before you get
		to #2...(as shown here)

	2. The local civil defense of U.S. communities. IP addresses
		could easily be handled like community service
		organization licensing. ISPs could be required
		be required to have some certification or
		credentials before they are allocated a block.
		This may occur as more people's lives depend
		on the Internet and functions such as 911 move
		in that direction.
	3. World economic development issues which must be
		dove-tailed with U.S. foreign policies. ARIN
		can not hope to track these issues and I can
		not imagine that the U.S. Government wants
		its citizens and U.S. businesses to discover
		that it is easier to get IP addresses as a dictator
		on an island in the Caribbean than as the CEO
		of an ISP.
	4. The intellectual property value of IP addresses to
		schools, universities, research institutions, etc.
	5. The value of the IP Address Registry industry to U.S.
		citizens in terms of jobs, etc. This along with
		the domain name registry business is a
		multi-billion dollar per year industry and the
		U.S. is not going to allow that to walk away.
	6. Fairness issues regarding who gets addresses and
		who does not. As addresses become scarce
		and as more people get on-line, issues such
		as discrimination, EEO, and affirmative action
		will become more significant.
	7. Business issues regarding the EXTRA cost burden
		placed on a small company that large companies
		do not incur, when there is address space sitting
		idle and a new company will cause router entries
		either way.
	8. IRS issues regarding how IP addresses should be
		handled as assets and how they can be transferred
		from one organization to another.
	9. Prior claims of ownership or grandfathered rights
		of allocations made to companies that may
		not be using the resources or want to be
		taxed on those assets.
	10. Current allocations to the U.S. Government and their
		internal management of IP allocations.
	11. Internet II and its addressing needs as well as the
		evolution of IPv4 to IPv6.
	
@ The moment any sort of US government oversight of ARIN is attempted, the
@ whole technical underpinning disappears. IP addresses are now primarily
@ allocated on the basis of national politics. The rules are negotiated in
@ another round of NAFTA negotiations. In the interim, people either start
@ using IPv6, renumber like mad with RFC1918 proxies, or use OSI and X.25
@ instead of IP.
@ 

"U.S. government oversight of ARIN is attempted..."

Do you own ARIN ?
Are you compensated by Network Solutions, Inc. ?

Maybe this should be reversed. Any attempt by ARIN
to walk off with the /8s that belong to the U.S. Government,
the DOD, and/or the U.S. taxpayers will bring ARIN into
a spotlight brightter than anything you probably have
ever seen out there in British Columbia.

@ But I think that some fairly senior people in the US government already
@ understand this so there is no real possibility of it happening. What you
@ see now in the media is caused by the fact that the low-level people
@ (politically speaking) like network operators understand why RFC2050
@ is the way it is and understand why ARIN, APNIC and RIPE NCC are the best
@ way we know how to handle IP allocations for the forseeable future. Some
@ of these people are highly respected at senior levels of the US government
@ for their technical abilities and the people at those senior levels know
@ from fairly direct communications that things like ARIN are the right way
@ to go. However, this stuff has completely bypassed the junior and senior
@ levels of the bureaucracy. Many people within the bureaucracy are only now
@ learning what the Internet is and struggling to understand it. It's not
@ surprising that they are coming to some ludicrously wrong conclusions.
@ But since the senior levels of government already understand the Internet
@ and where it fits into the big picture, these bureacrats have virtually
@ no influence that matters. 
@ 

Interesting...your comments about the "senior people"
in Canada are usually just the opposite.

How are you so clued into the "senior people" in the U.S. ?

You often seem proud that you do not own a T.V. and
live in an isolated area with very few neighbors. As we
have seen in the other forums such as the IAHC, the
"senior people" in government are not on the Internet
and for that matter not even what you call the "junior"
levels. Where do you get these visions up there isolated
in Canada ?

@ So I don't think we need to seriously worry about the government stepping
@ in and taking over. If we do a good job at creating ARIN with a fair and
@ workable structure then ARIN will be allowed to do the job it was created
@ to do.
@ 

You obviously have a very different picture of the
real world. That is easy to do, when the Internet
is your main source of information. I have a feeling
we will be revisting your above comments as well
as others, before the people of the U.S. make
some important decisions about #1 to #11 above.

As in past forums, I recommend that you work
with the "senior people" in Canada to make sure
they have your input. Those will likely be the people
down the road who will have to work with the U.S.
on coordinating on some of #1 to #11. I have a feeling
they have many of the same issues and do not
put technical topology at the top of a list with only
one item. Your gross oversimplification of these
complex problems will not likely play well in Canada
and I can certainly tell you that it will not get far
down here in the U.S.

--
Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation

e-mail:
JimFleming at unety.net
JimFleming at unety.s0.g0 (EDNS/IPv8)