Daniel Karrenberg <daniel.karrenberg@ripe.net> writes: Hi Daniel,
[pruned to ncc-services again]
To which I'm not yet subscribed, so this will probably not reach anyone but you initially...
Who is selling DNSSEC courses? The whole point of DISI is to kick-start
We do.
I was not aware of that. So given that, should we stop DISI and other kick-start like things. Or is the benefit to the membership as-a-whole and the community more important?
I'm not suggesting that. I'm merely giving a concrete example showing that Jim has a valid point. However, I think that in the spirit of kick-starting you need be careful about two things: 1. Make sure that you're kick-starting something that doesn't already exist or is already happening. 2. Be prepared to stop once there is to much interference with other alternatives. The problem here is that in an environment with a subsidized service, the growth of robust commercially-supported alternatives will always be retarded and constrained, and this damages the health and growth of the Internet as a whole. Both of these are close to impossible to fulfill in practice, of course. But you need to at least try hard enough to avoid complaints.
PS. With the Autonomica hat on: we also do DNS monitoring, quite similar to dnsmon, and for exactly the same reasons, i.e. to monitor our various DNS services, i.root-servers.net being one of them. To offset our costs for this we are offering this service on some sort of cost recovery basis to interested parties like TLDs.
Interesting. I have never seen any of it or seen it quoted anywhere.
Marketing is not our strongest side ;-) RIPE NCC has much more resources for marketing than we have, but I'd rather spend our resources on doing DNS than trying to compete with that.
In the end this is all about education. Everyone needs to understand that there is a cost associated with providing a service. If the service is offered "for free" that is just a metaphor for "someone else is paying for it".
Yes. And that someone else whould do so willingly of course.
Well, I think it is a bit more complicated than that. I believe that for a system to be stable there should be a trail of services performed that is matched by a reverse trail of revenues paid. That way everyone involved is both giving and receiving something and therefore they are presumably satisfied. When the costs don't follow the services performed you will have "winners" and "losers". The winners are the guys that get services without paying and the losers are those that pay without getting services. Such systems may work for a while, but long term this is bad, since you will not achieve a scalable system where increased consumption can finance increased production. But I think we're getting bogged down too deep into layman interpretation of market economics here. Johan