Re: [ga] FYI: Staff Draft towards Mission Statement

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 05:40:25PM +0100, Per Koelle wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Mar 2002, Kent Crispin wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 06:32:38AM -0500, Peter de Blanc wrote:
> > > It is truely amazing that something once  done by volunteers, like
> > > building and co-ordinating the operation of the global Internet prior
> > > to, say 1995 or 1996,
> >
> > 1) In 95/96 there was a paid IANA staff, though it is true that a lot
> > of work was done by people who were paid under rather non-specific
> > contracts.
> [SNIP]
> 
> >
> > > What is even MORE amazing is that the US $ 5 million  is just the tip of
> > > the iceberg.
> >
> > No, it is not amazing at all.  If anything, given the demands made on
> > ICANN, it is amazingly *cheap*.  As an end user, this is working out to
> > around $.20/domain name per year (3% of the dominant wholesale cost) to
> > pay for the global coordination functions that ICANN provides.
> 
> Dear Kent,
> 
> This is rubbish (and you af all should know),

No, it is not rubbish.

> As far as TLD's is concerned, ICANN/IANA is (only) managing a database with
> +250 entries !!!!

That is an egregious oversimplification.  The root zone is not just any
old database, ICANN/IANA is providing management for a database that the
entire world is using, and that the whole world cares a lot about.  That
is a *vastly* more complicated thing than "only managing a database". 

> I (for one) run a similar thing with +370.000 entries for around USD 3 mil.!

If all *you* were doing was managing a database with 370,000 entries,
then $ 3Mil is *way* too much.  A database with 370000 entries is really
fairly small as databases go -- I personally could manage a database
like that for a very *very* tiny fraction of $3mil.   

The reason it costs you $3mil to run your database has almost nothing to
do with the size of your database -- the cost is caused almost entirely
by other factors.  Similarly, the costs to ICANN/IANA for running the
root zone have essentially nothing to do with the size of root zone. 

Regards

Kent

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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