Hi stephen, I am sorry you see it that way. *** We are not dictating anything here *** We need someone with the profile I described earlier to keep up to date with developments that affect hostmaster work and that is able to communicate that information to the hostmasters for use in their daily work dealing woth ISPs. This is a hard requirement for us to be able to provide a good service to all of you. Yes, we could have everyone reading all the trade journals, however doing that through proper training is more effective and saves your money. What my mail was proposing was to also use this person to get closer contact with ISPs, while not having the hostmasters themselves having to travel to the ISPs. I understood that the idea was to get the knowledge about your daily life to the hostmasters. If this person is able to communicate that, then what is the difference between having the hostmasters going there in person or someone communicating things to them? From my perspective the main one is the disruption for daily work at the NCC that sending people out every so often can have which affects the time you have to wait to get a reply back from us. Quoting my previous mail: "I hope to hear from you" and I still do. Joao On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Stephen Burley wrote:
Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote:
Dear all,
I believe this thread never really came to an end.
We have been thinking long about how to address the distance that is perceived as separating the RIPE NCC registration services from everyday operations of ISPs.
We have considered the proposed idea of having RIPE NCC hostmasters visiting ISPs to get in touch with their daily operations and needs.
The preceding mails have raised the issues of how to select the LIRs to be visited, the finance implications of having the hostmasters travel to these ISP locations, the potential danger of lobbying and whether those visits should be used as a mechanism for helping ISPs in auditing processes.
To these, I would like to add the potential disruptions to operations that these visits may have for the Registration Services department.
Now, financial issues could definitely be resolved in agreement with the membership.
The potential for lobbying is a worrisome prospect, not because I fear that anyone would actually even think about it, but because should any allegations be raised it would be difficult to prove them wrong and in any case a certain damage would have been done.
Mainly because of this, I would rather not have RIPE NCC hostmasters visit individual members.
However, we do acknowledge the need for hostmasters to be more up to date with developments in the industry and the fact that it would be very benefitial to increase awareness of daily ISP operations within Registration Services.
To address this, and some other internal issues, we will be hiring for a new position within the RIPE NCC with the specific function of providing internal technical advise and training that will enable us to better track developments and be more familiar with everyday operations.
So although this looks like a change in thought its not really, as this means one person in the NCC will be more clued up as to practices and needs within the ISP world and even have a vast experience of many environments, but they will not be doing and hostmaster work which was the whole point of this proposal. This proposal was designed to give the experience and feel of working in a very competitive world and dealing with customers preconceptions of what the internet is. This proposal goes no further than wasting our money on a new position within the NCC with no more real gains other than technical knowledge increase which can be done by reading the ISP/telco trade journals. What is the difference from a hostmaster being accused of coercion or this new persons position still the same perceived problem.
The RIPE NCC is their to because the RIPE community wishes it and the RIPE NCC up hold policy as set out by RIPE and as far as i see it there was a consensus that this initial proposal was a good idea, but the NCC thought otherwise who is dictating policy here?
This person, will not be routinely involved in the handling of member address requests and might be a good candidate to visit a few LIRs selected randomly from different "pools" (big, small, different economic and regulatory environments,...) in the future.
I believe this solution can effectively address the concerns raised by this discussion while minimizing the drawbacks of the solutions proposed so far and also has other benefits for the RIPE NCC.
Hope to hear from you, Joao Damas Head of external services RIPE NCC