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