At 10:51 AM 3/15/96 +0900, David R. Conrad wrote:

Gordon:

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Just a small quibble David: when you say "the IANA" decided, it gives the impression that an august group of people like the IESG took action.

I certainly would not intend to, nor do I think I did, give the impression that a group like the IESG took action. One of the advantages (and arguable disadvantages) of the current registry system is a lack of bureaucratic overhead of the type you thought I was implying.

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In reality "the IANA" is but a SINGLE person - John Postel.

Actually, it is 2 people, Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds. However, note that the IANA is responsible to the IAB in the great Internet organzation chart in the sky.

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If some people are upset I suspect it might be because the power to make such a decision is vested in the hands of ONE person rather than in a group.

My impression is that people are concerned that an organization with no track record and no customers (at this time) was able to obtain a highly coveted large block of space. Further, some people are concerned with the allocation of a subnet of a class A where an equivalently sized block in the class C space would have seemed appropriate.

As I seem to recall, the @Home proposal (at least what I saw of it after the fact) was for a potential 50 Million addresses. This definitely puts it out of the range of a registry decision and moved it to IANA. Those of us that were in the middle of the IPng address size debate had predicted a request like this and have not supprise of the outcome. BTW, there are 'rumours' floating around that China wants a couple of A's or so... Robert Moskowitz Chrysler Corporation (810) 758-8212