What if the watchdog of the US IP NIC was the members? Obviously the IANA is still in control, to some extent, of allocation policies, but if the providers were members and had some control over the operations, mightn't it be worth a few K / year? It'd also encourage people to get address space from their providers unless they're SURE they really need separate space. Of course, I argues vehemently against the $10k/year CIX "tax", and this would be a "tax" of sorts. Perhaps there's a better forum than the nanog list for discussion of this - perhaps a BOF at the next NANOG meeting would be better. Avi
I fully agree with the latter and not necessarily with the former.
At least for the Internet *number* registration part there are two working examples where both the watching and funding is done by the region's ISPs in a very open and cooperative manner: APNIC and the RIPE NCC. This works well because the ISPs realise that they have to organise this together, whether they like cooperating or not.
I do not see any reason why such a model could not work for the InterNIC or at least the number registration part of it. To me it just seems like a question of the providers realising that they have to organise some things together and getting their act together. I am quite sure that NSF would happily let go and I expect that NSI would be willing to talk as there are benefits in such a scheme for them too.
But then I am a naive European and not so closely involved with N.A. politics. If however someone wants to make this work I will happily help them by explaining our experiences.
Daniel