13 Jan
2016
13 Jan
'16
8:25 a.m.
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:
1. 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.
2. Do the coordinators use shell access to modify DNS
zone files at
ampr.org?
No.
3. 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