North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: NOC communications (was Re: Process management)

  • From: Michael Dillon
  • Date: Mon Jul 13 00:21:50 1998

On Sun, 12 Jul 1998, John Todd wrote:

> While I'd LOVE to see
> a line printer banging away in a corner on a 2400 baud Ku band
> "gas-station" style uplink, I don't see that happening.  Besides, someone
> would have to centrally coordinate that - you think ARIN would mind taking
> on a multi-national satellite communications network?  Sure - just hike the
> price for an AS number to, say, $4000 a year and make it mandatory that
> each AS has one of these systems in house.   Right.

Don't laugh. Something like this *WILL* happen. The trend is for the
Internet to subsume the world's telephone network and it may even extend
beyond that to subsuming television and radio as well. This makes it
critical infrastructure and if the industry doesn't solve the emergency
NOC commnications problem then a solution will be legislated. 

> Part 1:  ARIN should be a fascist for maintaining correct information. 

This is in process. Cleaning up dirty info takes time. Getting a procedure
in place to maintain it clean takes time. It would help if more ARIN
members would make their wishes for correct database info known to ARIN so
that it is clear what priority to give this.

> Phone numbers should be audited.  I'm a big fan of "turn it off and see
> who comes running" update procedures.  If someone doesn't respond within
> a reasonable number of attempts, or information is out of date for X
> period of time, enforce policy by denial of service.

This is not unlike the domain name model where contact info is somewhat
verified once per year during renewals and if you don't renew then the
registration is gone. But how can we do this with IP addresses? Should
ARIN announce a null0 route for an IP block when contact info goes stale?
This seems rather like using a sledgehammer to swat a flea. On the other
hand, maybe there should be a multistep procedure that terminates with
exactly that result?

In my judgement, the current ARIN Advisory Council and Board of Trustees
are not interesting in sticking with the status quo ante. If things can be
done better then we are able to make changes and intend to make changes to
do things better. If you have suggestions, then we will look at them
seriously. I think most AC and BoT members are on this list so any
discussions here could play a big role in our decisions in the future. 

--
Michael Dillon                 -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Communications Inc.      -               E-mail: [email protected]
Check the website for my Internet World articles -  http://www.memra.com