On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 11:55:19PM -0600, Bill Horne wrote:
I understand that the suggestion was to automate the IP assignment process, and I was under the impression that it didn't work out because it's so hard to identify applicants in an automated system.
It wasn't a suggestion, it was an ill-tempered gripe. It stems from a comment on one person's difficulty in contacting the Israeli coordinator; we're investigating now but it seems possible that the reason he's not replying is because he's dead. Given the average age of most hams, that's always a possibility, even in this group.
Nearly every suggestion to automate assignment has run up against at least the following problem: that we have to have some way of knowing that the requesting party is a bona-fide ham radio operator who knows the right thing to ask for and is going to use the allocation only for ham purposes.
No, it's impractical to replace the coordinators with an automated system because of all the other things they do, among which are to verify the validity of the person requesting, to check on the size of the subnet requested (ie, see if he's asking for what he really needs), assist the requestor with getting his system set up, and so on. Even if we were to adopt LOTW or some other identity verification process, these other tasks can't be automated. These volunteers are valuable!
I'm late to the party, so I'll ask that we talk about the existing process in general terms: that will give me and the other readers a notion of what's possible. To that end, please answer these questions:
- What changes, if any, would you like to make?
Me? I wasn't suggesting any changes. The existing portal works fairly well for a first cut at making one. Undoubtedly we'll refine it but that depends on volunteers to do the design and programming (PHP, Javascript), and so far several calls for volunteers have fallen on deaf ears.
It seems that a lot of hams aren't willing to volunteer their time (nor money) to support AMPRNet, they just want to use it. A lot of users won't even bother to subscribe to this mailing list. I could forcibly subscribe them when they join the portal but it goes against my principles to do so.
- Do the coordinators use shell access to modify DNS zone files at ampr.org?
No.
- Is there a web or other interface available to them that helps them works with the DNS? If so, what is it?
There is an email robot. The portal has a DNS provision that's not operational, primarily because of the logistics of getting the existing DNS system and data converted over. It's turning out to be a Herculean task, primarily because of all the cleanup of the data that has to be done first. The existing DNS has thirty years of cruft in it and every volunteer (there have been two) has bounced off the sheer size of the task. There's a LOT of crud in it. I work on it when I can.
(It's been suggested that we simply start fresh with an empty DNS. Or throw away all the entries that are more than five years old. Though doable, neither seems very practical because of the highly negative effect they'd have on existing users, some of whom have legitimately been in the DNS for twenty years.) I think that if there were easy solutions we would already have implemented them. - Brian