I've heard the horror stories, and I remember that ARIN was difficult to deal with 10 years ago, but my recent experiences with them have been relatively painless. I expected the process to get worse as IPs become more scarce, but I haven't been seeing that. AFAICT they are more helpful and easier to work with right now than they have ever been. They came out with simplified templates last week and it looks like the process will now be even easier. Maybe it's harder for companies that don't run an rwhois server, and rwhois can be tricky to setup, but I was able to do it, and I would expect (or at least hope) that most of the people who are paid to run networks are in the same IQ range as me. What's so hard about this? http://www.arin.net/registration/templates/net-isp.txt Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
Ever notice the only folks happy with the status quo are the few who have already have an intimate knowledge of the ARIN allocation process, and/or have the right political connections to resolve the "issues" that come up when dealing with them?
Try looking at it from an outsider's point of view instead. If you're new to dealing with ARIN, it is not uncommon to find the process is absolutely baffling, frustrating, slow, expensive, and requiring intrusive disclosure just shy of an anal cavity probe.