Re: [Wg-rms] Stepping down from co-chair role

[Terry Manderson <terry@apnic.net>]

Hi Jas,

On 22/11/2006, at 3:46 PM, Jas Webb wrote:
> I'm going to leap to an assumption that APNIC has done
> some analysis to say that email is costly in operation
> or otherwise. If that is the case, maybe APNIC should
> provide details.

Firstly there are the costs of development, while RIPE do indeed write 
the whois software code (as Tim pointed out), APNIC must modify the 
code to include the APNIC policy and business rules each time we look 
to upgrade, as email updates are a function of the RIPE whois server. 
APNIC also needs to remove or disable code portions that are products 
of the RIPE policy process. Associated with the code changes are the 
costs of testing and debugging. These costs are not trivial, The last 
whois upgrade project took APNIC 8 months of consistent work complete.

There are costs of operation in terms of scale. APNIC is under a 
barrage or email, unfortunately a large proportion is spam. As email 
updates are important to members APNIC cannot risk accidentally 
discarding an update. So auto-dbm remains unfiltered - but as a 
consequence the program for processing auto-dbm@ messages is under 
load, hence delays to member's updates are bound to happen. I could 
make sweeping statements about member growth and growing member updates 
and the overall scale of that, but I would prefer if you came to your 
own conclusions.

From a usage point of view we notice that MyAPNIC interaction has 
grown, for example starting the week of the 13/11/06, the percentage of 
updates via MyAPNIC were:
	Mon      33.6%
	Tues     88.2%
	Wed      60.7%
	Thurs    68.1%
	Fri      56.2%

Averaging 61.3% for the working week. The average for the week two 
months prior was 39%.
The graph depicting this for the last 4 months shows a definite trend 
away from email. Is the membership at large going there despite this 
proposal?

Lastly (for this email) there is the costs of potentially extending the 
RIPE code to handle secure and encrypted updates via email (as was 
suggested at APNIC 22). An exact cost figure to do this hasn't been 
established, I suspect it would be substantial given our existing 
efforts and cost to keep step with the RIPE server changes and 
upgrades.


> or is this an implementation issue.. is it just too
> hard for APNIC to deal with both?

From my point of view, Hard reflects the amount of resources the 
membership would like APNIC to assign to doing this. And understandably 
resources are a cost issue. Given we see a trend away from email to 
secure and encrypted systems, would assigning resources to supporting 
both be a sensible recommendation to the community and membership? 
(setting technical issues aside)

Terry
--
Terry Manderson                         email:      terry@apnic.net
Network Operations Manager, APNIC       sip:    info@voip.apnic.net
http://www.apnic.net                    phone:      +61 7 3858 3100