23 Feb
2020
23 Feb
'20
11:55 a.m.
Thank you for you kind explanation. I'll add some of my own for the
situation I'm facing.
On 2/23/20 4:45 AM, John Gilmore via 44Net wrote:
Previous assignments by Brian (WB6CYT) have not
generally been overruled.
Brian took very seriously his duty to both make space available to real
amateur radio operations and to deny space to opportunists trying to poach
the space for commercial, personal, spam/malware or other purposes.
Many people requested assignments, and most of them received
assignments. Those assignments are and were recorded in the ARDC
portal, which was initially programmed by Chris (G1FEF), and operated and
evolved by both Brian and Chris. The data in it was supplied by
Brian, by net44 users who register to receive allocations, and by the
volunteer regional coordinators who make allocations.
Any collection of detailed allocations too complicated to fit in one
person's memory or on the back of an envelope needs a definitive register
that provides the collective memory of all the past decisions. The portal
was and remains that definitive register.
If your allocation is not in that register, then we'd need to figure out
why it isn't. The ARDC Board has access to some of Brian's stored
email, as well as backup dumps of the Portal databases, so we can do
some searching among those if needed. So far, your rant did not mention
the particular IP address allocations involved, so we have had little
information to start from.
Maybe I can provide some insights on this.
At the time the allocation I've requested on portal was under 44.190/16,
because a) I wanted to use the prefixes for anycast, and it's not really
country bound; b) The portal says "The owner of the network you have
selected has chosen not to allow allocation requests. " even on today.
Brian asked me why I'm not requesting from the CN list, it explained and
eventually received the 44.159.66.0/23.
An allocation of 768 IP addresses, such as yours,
which has considerable
monetary value if used commercially, will naturally get more scrutiny
than a typical request for a /29 that only has 8 addresses and can't be
routed via BGP.
I can understand this, and again, I promise I will follow the ToS.
But please also understand that, the 44net assignments has leaser's
personal name all over it. It'd be very unwise to use it for commercial
purpose. It is very clear to me that those addresses are tightly tied to
my call-sign, which is also publicly linked to my name, and address.
This holds me personally liable for anything happened in the requested
prefixes.
Even though, I got rejected by several providers when trying to setup
the BGP for 44/8 prefixes. Vultr is the only one accepts my leased
prefix, and Packet did so only after that prefixes are registered on
RADb by Vultr. Smaller providers won't even take a look at LOA or RADb.
I think that everyone in the field for long enough agrees that the
internet, and routing world is rather bizarre and messy, actually it
took me great amount of courage to apply for the addresses in the first
place.
The Chinese agency that licenses amateur radio operators, the State
Radio Regulation of China (http://www.srrc.org.cn) does not appear to
provide an English-language portal for looking up amateur radio
licenses. This currently makes it a more manual process to verify the
license status of Chinese hams. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_licensing_in_China
(I hope some 44net users from Asia will improve that Wikipedia page,
which is still mostly a stub page.)
I looked into that page, and yes, it's
lame. I will improve it asap.
At the moment, as a natural person; he's a
volunteer. One of the issues
being negotiated in the draft contract, and with lawyers, is to what
extent ARDC will collect sensitive personal data, how it would safeguard
that data that it does collect, and to what extent ARDC will be subject
to privacy controls such as the European GDPR. These issues have been
handled informally up to the time that Brian died.
The current situation is that when Chris requests identification photos
or documents, he examines them and then deletes them after approval.
My day job is an operations engineer at an incubator, and frequently
deal with compliance & abuse issues. Starting from last year, my blood
pressure gets to the rooftop every time a pm or a programmer wants to
store some photo ID, Passport, etc. in the cloud. I usually turn down
the request, and/or direct them at our legal department. The
verification process they wanted, eventually goes to some eligible
third-party that costs some serious $$$.
The example I just gave maybe applies to China only, but at least can
tell that even as an LLC., there's still too much risk to handle the PII
by ourselves.
It is fortunate that small, informal organizations
still have room to
operate in today's world, and can provide positive benefits to society.
ARDC under Brian's leadership was such an organization; the board helped
him around the edges, but he was our leader, and he also did most of the
work. Now we have no leader experienced in exactly what Brian did. As
organizations grow and become more formal, the world expects a degree of
impartiality, predictability, and adherence to rules that reduces the
flexibility of the informal processes.
Yes, I understand this, it's the part
where I appreciate in the "free
world". But today it's even harder, and the trend is likely to be even
harder to survive in the future.
Quan, you are simultaneously asking that you be given the benefit of an
informal process that provided you with the allocation you claim, and
yet also asking that we provide predictable rules and adhere to them,
rather than continuing informally. There is clearly a tension between
these extremes. The ARDC board (all volunteers) and the technical
volunteers such as Chris and the regional coordinators are trying to
chart a middle course. Thank you for your help in pointing out some
of the implications of the choices we are trying to make.
Sorry I did not realize this. Informal is good. But to my credit, the
process as G1FEF asked me to comply is as formal as applying a credit
card from my bank.
Also, as a foreign national and paypal account owner, every year, they
to the KYC again, but they just want three things, proof of address,
passport photo, and an ITIN number.
I think that he might thinks that I'm a fraudster or something worse.
It DOES seem to be your problem that the assignment wasn't added to the
portal. If your assignment was in the portal, then your allocation
would not be getting the scrutiny it is currently getting. As the
wiki says in the "Requesting a block" page:
https://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Requesting_a_block
"You must request an amprnet block direct from the Portal. First you
must create your account at the Portal. Once you do, you must
login..."
https://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Announcing_your_allocation_directly
"Apply for your AMPRNet allocation via the Portal. Check the Direct
box to indicate that your connection will be using a direct
announcement of the subnet (via the BGP protocol).
"Upon verification and approval, the AMPRNet administrator will
provide authorization to your ISP allowing them to announce your
allocation."
If only one of your three /24 allocations is in the portal, then how did
Brian, the very meticulous AMPRNet administrator end up providing you
with a Letter of Authorization for the others?
I believe it is best to put the /23
in the portal, fix the problem.
Anyway, it wasn't my fault that the address wasn't in portal.
Best Regards,
Quan
Best regards back to you,
John Gilmore, W0GNU
ARDC board member
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