ARIN is not/is too/is not/is too... blah.

[David R. Conrad]

[nanog removed from cc]

Jim,

I would request you stop trying to confuse people who are interested
in doing something constructive with irrelevancies such as involvement
of the US Department of State, the eDNS stuff, and your pet projects of
grabbing control of existing /8s.

>@ Many folk have stated that Africa should have its own NIC.  It would
>@ make most sense that DNS, ASN and IP Allocation came from one place.
>@ Adopting the line of 'slow startup' - I approached the InterNIC for a
>@ single superblock of Class C addresses - to start attending with some
>@ of the local address problems - and have currently been refused.
>@ 
>Who did you talk to or contact ?

Please read Mark's comments above again.

>Did you contact the NSF ?

No, and it would be inappropriate for him to do so.  The creation of
new regional registries is a function of the IANA.

But you know that, even if you refuse to accept it.

>You have to start somewhere. People who already
>have all of the "nic" infrastructure are not going to
>give you much help building yours, because they
>want to try to control the industry.

Blatant lie.  

I have in the past been involved in discussions with various people
about the establishment of AfriNIC, as have Daniel Karrenberg and Kim
Hubbard.  APNIC has offered to help in the establishment of additional
regional registries on numerous occasions and will continue to do so.
I believe the other regionals have made similar offers.

>Your task is large but it is not impossible.

And how would you know what his task is?  Please describe your
experience in operating an Internet (IPv4) address allocation
registry.  Copious email doesn't count.

>	1. Get the buy-in from 4 or 5 ISPs that have
>		existing facilities to handle the basics
>		and pick a name and banner to rally
>		around.

No.  Mark should get buy-in from all the ISPs he proposes AfriNIC will
be providing services for.  Imposing a registry upon people does not
make sense.

>	2. Get the buy-in of your elected officials
>		and have them contact the U.S. State Department
>		and the National Science Foundation.

Buy-in from his elected officials is irrelevant, particularly in an
international setting.  Further, the US state department has nothing
to do with establishing a regional registry.  NSF would probably be
interested, and might point out some resources that could be helpful,
but other than that, there is no particular need for them to be
involved.

>	3. Deploy a confederation of TRUE Root Name Servers
>		similar to the eDNS confederation (http://www.edns.net)

Irrelevant.

>	4. Develop a Registration Authority (RA) to help cultivate
>		the growth of TLD Registries.

Irrelevant.

>	5. Develop one or more TLD Registries to develop some
>		of the infrastructure and business community awareness
>		needed to support the Internet Registry industry in
>		an area.

Irrelevant.

>	6. Help with IPv4 ecology and reclamation efforts and plan
>		to take over the management of an existing /8
>		once you have enough infrastructure in place.

Existing /8?  No.  Presumably AfriNIC will obtain a /8 or /7 from the
IANA like the other regionals (with the historic exception of
InterNIC) when they started.

Not bad, you missed 6 of 6.

>It is important to develop
>and demonstrate the infrastructure needed
>to handle domain names, IP addresses, etc.

True, although the only DNS issues Mark will likely need to face are
related to in-addrs.

Regards,
-drc