The Australian Internet Registry

The Australian Internet Registry has been incorporated to address a number of
fundamental problems with the current structure of Internet Address
Management within Australia and to be able to respond to a number of likely
changes in Internet wide Internet Address management procedures.

Until 1993 the Internet address space was administered on a global basis
by the Internic in the United States. The functions of the Internic were
initially undertaken by SRI, under contract from the Defence Advanced
Projects Agency, and subsequently undertaken by Government Systems
Incorporated, a private company operating under the terms of a contract with
the National Science Foundation.

During 1993 a number of fundamental changes took place within the address
administration function, and the National Science Foundation, with the support
of the Federal Networking Council, embarked on the process of devolving a
single US Government funded operation into a number of regionally structured
address management operations, with each operation funded from within
their domain of responsibility.

Within Europe the RIPE NCC took on this responsibility, operating from funding
derived from European Network Service providers, while in the Asia Pacific
region, a distributed voluntary effort was instigated as the APNIC, with core
coordination being provided with Japanese NIC and WIDE project funding.

The ever increasing scale of activity in address allocation, and the
additional address processing that now has to happen in order to ensure that
address allocations follow the guidelines as determined in the Internet
community document, RFC 1466, imply that these voluntary efforts are under
increasing strain in their efforts to provide a consistent and well
managed service.

While it is possible for the Internet Service Providers to "take over" these
functions, this is not seen as being in the community's best interests. The
Internet Address space is a common resource, and management of this resource
has to conform with various principles of equity of access, fairness of
allocation and relevance of the function to the intended environment of
deployment. While network service providers may well be in a position to
effectively resource the operation, there is always the risk to the community
in monopolistic trading practices.

One way to address this is to place the address allocation function in the
domain of a totally independent entity, which operates within the broad
structure of a not-for-profit service operation, and applies a single
community policy in an open and fair manner. It is essential that such an
entity understands the Internet technologies and is in a position to undertake
this function in a manner which results in effective address utilisation
and fair and equitable access to addresses.

This is the intent underlying the incorporation of the Australian Internet
Registry.

The Australian Internet Registry undertakes Internet Address allocation
functions for Australian entities. It operates in accordance with the policy
guidelines as documented in the Internet document RFC 1466, and is currently
resourced through the strictly voluntary efforts of its three initial
directors, Andy Linton, Hugh Irvine and Geoff Huston, and currently operates
on the basis of a freely provided service.

It should be noted that there is already a precentent for this type of
resistry service in the form of Standards Australia, who administer the
leasing of OSI NSAP addresses and PRMD names. Standards Australia charges
for this service, it is not free, nor is it done with volunteer labour.

The Australian Internet Registry
ACN 066 218 951
LPO Box 60
ANU - Canberra ACT 2601

register@air.net
Phone: +61 6 2588846    Fax: +61 6 2491369

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The fax was delivered on connect.com.au letterhead, from the offices of
Cisco Systems Australia in Sydney.
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