Disappointing ARIN - A great advertisement for the USA ?

Sat Sep 17 00:43:15 UTC 2011

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 5:53 AM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> On Sep 16, 2011, at 3:21 AM, Randy Bush wrote:
> Randy -
>  Over the last decade, we've run multiple consultations with the

While I appreciate that ARIN has had community consultations...
It needs to be understood that the WHOIS service is a critical service
that many people rely upon,  and many people/organizations have developed
tools and internal processes that work with the WHOIS service and rely on it
continuing to operate in the manner it has operated in the past.

There may be no RFC specifying the exact contents of the WHOIS output and
the query syntax, but these are de-facto standards and should not be changed
without a great deal of care.

Many stakeholders are unlikely to be well-represented in the consultation
process.

ARIN should acknowledge this fact, and therefore ensure that any changes
suggested  do not break or significantly alter the standard behavior
and operation
of WHOIS,  when a WHOIS user is not issuing a query specifically asking to
utilize a new feature or format.

When new changes are being proposed they should be operated on a separate WHOIS
system in parallel.

The community consultation process should not merely be  "take this
list of suggestions",
there  should be ACCEPTANCE TESTING  and approval by the community of the final
result.

Regards,

--
-JH