Policy and PR problem

Dear all,

I find it useful that you bring this up Hans-Petter.
I will not try to provide any replies or solutions at this point in 
the discussion as I am interested in the input from our members (and 
others in the community).

However, what I can say is that we at the RIPE NCC are very aware of 
how complicated it is for new LIRs to learn all policies and 
procedures involved in obtaining IP address space and AS numbers. 
(And indeed there are quite a few.) We invest a enormous amount of 
resources in educating these people, correcting them, explaining 
policies, justifying procedures, referring to documentation etc etc. 
In fact, this is where you see the bulk of our workload.

Although it has always been seen as part of the hostmaster role to 
educate the LIRs, it is not an easy task with the current dramatic 
growth of LIRs. We have partly discussed this with the May 17 
Taskforce and we are also constantly discussing it internally at the 
RIPE NCC, trying to find more efficient ways of coping with the 
workload and the growth.

But this if of course only one aspect/consequence of the problem. If 
the perception is as you describe, then there is a more serious 
problem and we need to look at other solutions.

This may be a PR problem. It is also possible that the policies 
simply have become too complicated for new members. (Can it be that 
the policies which are developed by experienced and clueful members 
of the Internet community is not necessarily easy for newer, less 
experienced LIRs?) Is the problem possibly a combination of the two?

I am very interested in how this is perceived in the membership 
before trying to give my analysis. Let's first try to define the 
problem and then continue discussing possible solutions.

Kind regards,

-- 
Nurani Nimpuno
Registration Services Manager
RIPE NCC
http://www.ripe.net




 "Gert Doering, Netmaster" <netmaster at space.net> writes:
 * Hi,
 * 
 * On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 11:27:54AM +0100, Hans Petter Holen wrote:
 * > personally I think that we have a serious PR problem here: is it 
so that t
 * he
 * > rules and regulations have become so strict and complicated that 
we, the
 * > lirs, tell our customers that this is very difficult and you 
should realy
 * > use private addresses, rather than explaining how the procedures 
and
 * > policies realy work ?
 * 
 * that "they are urged to force NAT on their customers, as much as 
possible".
 * 
 * This is not how I understood policy ("always consider NAT, but the 
decision
 * is the customer's - and everybody can get as much addresses as 
they can
 * show their need for"), so maybe the current policy isn't 
documented clearly
 * enough...
 * 
 * Gert Doering
 *         -- NetMaster
 * -- 
 * SpaceNet AG                 Mail: netmaster at Space.Net
 * Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14   Tel : +49-89-32356-0
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 * 
 * 
 *