What do you want?

[Jon Lewis]

On Thu, 1 May 1997, Kim Hubbard wrote:

> >From the beginning several of you have questioned the estimated budget
> of approximately two million (not three million) dollars stating that
> ARIN could be run with a staff of three or four.  For those who believe
> this you need to decide if this is what you really want.  Maybe we
> could run ARIN with this minimal staff, if you don't care about quality
> of service.

What size staff does NSI have?  Has staff size had any bearing at all on
the level of incompetance NSI has aspired to?  Has anyone ever explained
what the heck was going on when thousands of messages went out saying "we
don't think you've paid for your domain and will cut off DNS in x days if
you don't prove payment has been made".  Many of these were paid, and many
were sent to the wrong people...as if they just went out to random contact
addresses.  I got notification for a few dozen domains registered to
people in other countries...domains I had absolutely nothing to do with
and had never heard of.

To err is human, to really muck things up requires a huge incompetant
staff?

> You have to decide how important, as an ISP, IP numbers are to you.  Is
> it okay with you to have your allocations take weeks, or months, since
> we won't have the staff to handle all of the requests in a timely manner?

So now it's a protection scheme?  "Support ARIN, or IP allocations at NSI
might get even slower?"
 
> over.  Of course, they'll have to be willing to work for less than the
> going rate because some of you also don't believe that ARIN should
> be paying staff the same amount as other Internet-related companies pay.

That's a very vague figure.  What is the going rate for internet-related
jobs?  Maybe it would make sense to locate ARIN in an area where money
goes a lot further and salaries can be lower without being unfairly low.
I've had offers to relocate from Gainesville, FL to Miami, FL, for 50%
more pay...but my money wouldn't go nearly as far in Miami.  The same sort
of thing goes for places like Boston, much of California, and probably the
D.C. area.  I've had offers in the former 2 and didn't seriously consider
them because Gainesville has a reasonably low cost of living. 

 
> And finally, for those of you who think that "ARIN" is out to make
> a financial "killing" and that "ARIN" is going to increase its fees
> and stick it to the ISPs, please remember, YOU ARE ARIN!  Arin will
> be doing whatever its members (you, the ISPs) tell it to.  

We're not ARIN, because we get no say unless we pay $1k/year for
membership.  I think, at the very least, this needs to be changes such
that any organization that has paid for an allocation is made a permenant
member at no charge.  Any successful ISP will eventually need to apply to
ARIN/Internic for an allocation either because their provider won't give
bigger blocks or because they are multihoming and want/need
bigger/portable blocks.  $2500 isn't necessarily pocket change...that's a
cisco 2501 and CSU/DSU.  If $2500 was change to us, we'd probably have
some spare Cisco parts on the shelf...but we don't.  Assuming we cough up
the $2500 for a /19 and get the allocation, asking us to pay another
$1000/year just to have some say in ARIN is a slap in the face.  Buying (I
know you won't call it that, but that's about what it is) an allocation
should make us a member for life in ARIN.  Charging organizations for
membership after they have bought allocations just makes it that much more
an elite club.

I'm not against ARIN...I just don't like the way it appears to be shaping
up as a private club that only internet big wigs and large companies will
be able to play in.  Jim's idea of a registry for each state or some other
plan for lots of IP registries is crazy in that there will be lots of
waste and it seems likely to me that there will be greater chances of
corruption "I hear you can get whatever allocation you want from the
Chicago IP registry if you slip them a few bills". 

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