---------- From: Jim Fleming[SMTP:JimFleming] Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 1998 7:23 AM To: 'arin-council at arin.net'; 'BBURR at ntia.doc.gov'; 'Ira_C._Magaziner at oa.eop.gov'; 'ARIN list' Cc: 'Tony Rutkowski'; 'Bala Pillai'; 'Christopher Ambler'; 'Gordon Cook'; 'Doug Humphrey'; 'John Gilmore'; 'Rey Blanco'; 'Jay at Iperdome.com'; 'John Charles Broomfield'; 'John Curran'; 'Jim Dixon'; 'Jeff Williams'; 'Karl Auerbach'; 'Karl Denninger'; 'KathrynKL'; 'Ken Fockler'; 'Kent Crispin'; 'Kim Hubbard'; 'John C Klensin'; 'Marc Hurst'; 'Michael Dillon'; 'Peter Deutsch'; 'Phil Howard'; 'Robert Raisch'; 'Richard J. Sexton'; 'Roeland M.J. Meyer'; 'Robert Shaw'; 'Robert L. Shearing'; 'Simon Higgs'; 'Scott Bradner'; 'Steve Wolff'; 'steve'; 'vinton g. cerf' Subject: Round Table vs. Hierarchy It appears that most parties involved in the planning of Internet Governance are more comfortable with evolving ARIN away from the IANA than using the ARIN structure as a basis to build the start of a Round Table structure with three "equal" partners, ARIANA, APNIC and RIPE. Surprisingly, even the people involved with ARIN appear to prefer the hierarchy structure. The two structures can be illustrated in the following crude stick diagrams. ==== Round Table Structure ===== ARIN / IANA \ / \ / \ APNIC-------------RIPE =========================== ==== Hierarchy Structure ======= IANA / | \ / | \ / | \ APNIC ARIN RIPE =========================== In the Round Table structure each participant at the table represents a historical collection of Internet resources (DNs, IPs, ASNs, etc.) and there is no central authority. More participants can be added to the Round Table as the Internet grows. When more than three participants are included a fully meshed commuication structure can be implemented via the Internet to help ensure that all participants are equals. This takes work, but in my opinion it is worth the effort. The Hierarchy takes less work. As shown above, the IANA (Inc.) plays a central coordination role and the regional registries are equals with each other, but not the IANA. The Hierarchy can be scaled by adding participants, but it is difficult to scale the IANA. This has been part of the problem with Internet Governance during the past few years. Despite the problems with the Hierarchy approach, it appears that most parties are more comfortable with that approach than the Round Table approach. Given that, the U.S. Government now has the difficult job of separating the ARIN and IANA tasks to allow ARIN to move to an arm's length position from the IANA Inc. It is unclear whether this will require the IANA to move away from ARIN or whether ARIN will move away from the IANA. They are currently intertwined, especially at the server, data base and operations level. Given that it appears that the ARIN Board and Advisory Council prefer to be part of the Hierarchy approach, it will be up to them to distance themselves from the IANA. This will require significant operational changes at ARIN. As a start, ARIN should deploy its own IN-ADDR.ARPA servers which can then be delegated parts of the IPv4 address space. This will distance ARIN from the legacy Root Name Servers operated by the U.S. Government and place it at arm's length. In the current situation, ARIN is using the USG roots for IN-ADDR.ARPA. The other two regional registries (RIPE and APNIC) are delegated parts of the IPv4 space. ARIN is not, because ARIN is tightly coupled with the IANA. This has to change. Since I am not an advocate of the Hierarchy approach, I will defer to other experts who seem to think that they can build a successful Internet using that centralized structure. I hope that they begin to enter these open forums to explain in detail how they intend to make this happen. It will be interesting to "watch" this metamorphosis take place. Note the emphasis on the word...watch... - Jim Fleming Unir Corporation IBC, Tortola, BVI -------- Logged at Thu Apr 23 00:04:40 MET DST 1998 ---------