US Federal gov't decides to solve DNS problem - rug pulled out from under NSF -

[Michael Dillon]

On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Justin W. Newton wrote:

> Any comments on this?

> >In an exclusive interview on March 27 with Don Telage, President of NSI we
> >were able to establish, with some degree of precision, that at the end of
> >February, the National Science Foundation and Network Solutions had
> >reached an agreement in principal to bring the NSF/NSI cooperative
> >agreement to a conclusion a year early on April 1, 1997 and to establish
> >and fund during a transition period the American Registry for Internet
> >Numbers (ARIN) which would have been freed from NSI control on April 1,
> >1997. Unfortunately, the administration move to find a fix for DNS
> >(discussed later in our full article) caused all forward movement between
> >NSI and NSF to cease on Monday March 3. Since then the situation has
> >become much more difficult and the freeing of ARIN as part of a package
> >deal that was acceptable to both sides at the beginning of March looks far
> >less acceptable to to NSI now as a stand alone option.

I think a lot of us suspected this was going to happen after the string of
messages that Fleming posted about the OIG at the end of January. 

But it ain't over 'til it's over. I wonder how many other ISP CEO's are
writing letters like the one Jim Browning just posted to NANOG...

Since federal politics has reared its ugly head here, political solutions
and political pressure can be a useful tool which means writing letters
and calling politicians in Washington DC, Ottawa, Mexico City,
Johannesburg, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Santiago...

*sigh* 

It would have been nice to get the IP allocation issue cleanly separated
from DNS but at this point it looks like that will no longer be possible
unless international pressure is brought to bear on the situation. Quite
frankly I am surprised that the US government with its traditional support
for free market solutions would want to meddle in this at all other than
to order the NSF to terminate the cooperative agreement and cut Network
Solutions free of regulatory control immediately. Since when does the
National Science Foundation have the authority to regulate commerce? What
does the Department of Commerce think about this issue?

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