RE: [wg-c] Re: IP/TM Concerns & New GTLDs

["Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer@mhsc.com>]

> Behalf Of Kent
> Crispin
> Sent: Monday, August 02, 1999 8:54 AM
>
> On Mon, Aug 02, 1999 at 02:10:44AM -0700, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
> [...]
>
> > As far as speed of deployment, where will the CASH come
> from, the ICANN?
> > Even at five registries, we are talking about over $20MUS
> in costs. If
> > they have to be non-profit, with a dictated business model,
> they will
> > NEVER come into being.
> >
> > In a prior message, I discussed costs of registry operations.
>
> Your figures have a number of flaws.  They assume a from-scratch
> development of a stand-alone proprietary registry.  In fact, of
> course, the most likely case is that the registry would be an
> incremental addition to an already existing facility with 24x7 NOC
> etc.

Now where are you going to find an existing NOC that's going to give you
their sunk-cost for free?

> Furthermore, even given the pure stand-alone development, your
> figures are highly inflated.  I agree that in general people costs
> are frequently underestimated, but you go very, very far in the other
> direction...

When was the last time you priced out commercial software development
work in the SF Bay Area? Commercial outfits don't have the luxury of
grad students working for free/cheap either.

> > > It's important to realize that there are essentially no
> economies of
> > > scale to worry about.  I could run a significant registry
> from my pc
> > > at home.  This is technical fact.  It isn't widely known,
> but one of
> > > the .com/.net/.org TLD servers actually is just a PC --
> true, it's a
> > > multiheaded Pentium server with a Gig of memory and lots
> of fast disk
> > > and really good network connectivity.  But it's a PC.
> And that's the
> > > DNS server, which gets ~2000 hits/sec.  The registry
> database, as has
> > > been mentioned before, gets orders of magnitude less
> traffic than the
> > > dns server.
> >
> > Yes, and who is running it and what is the cost of that data center
> > context?
>
> The server is maintained in an educational institution, I believe;
> most of the cost of the data center operations and infrastructure
> are already covered.

In other words, it is stealing infrastructure from other projects, or
borrowing surplus infrastructure from them. That it is an educational
institution means that they are not, by definition, under cost
control/management. Plus, they have tons of free/slave labor, in the
form of grad-students. That solution does not scale well.

> > What is the fully-burdened cost of that resource? You are
> > vastly understating that server.
>
> Couple of FTEs.  Most of the work is done by one person.

Who administers their salaries, benefits, and other compensation? Who
manages them? What is their reporting chain and how are they paid? Who
pays for the power. A/C, and other facilities that are being used? As I
stated earlier, it is fully burdened asset cost that is important. Also,
who does customer support and what is that cost? What portion is billed
against the server?

> > Yes, the whole thing could be run on
> > two or three racks. But the amount of infrastructure work
> is awesome,
> > especially for a proper service offering. The last estimate I put
> > together priced it out at $2.9M just for the development of
> the registry
> > software, not to mention on-going license fees and maintenance.
>
> Willie Black developed the registry software for Nominet in his spare
> time; the original contract for the CORE SRS was $700,000, but the
> CORE SRS was designed to handle the .com load, and that included all
> development costs, not just software.

I have yet to see the CORE project deliver on its promised goods and
services. Where is the code?

> > A sanitized version of that offering is available at
> > <http://download.dnso.net/dox/politicks/IDNRS.pdf>
>
> In general, I agree that people frequently underestimate labor costs,
> but you would do very well indeed, if you could sucker someone into
> that.  Eg: 2856 hours for a data modeler -- that's 1.5 years,
> full-time.  This is *not* a complicated database...

Read the spec again, there is a lot of work involved in the supporting
accounting infrastructure and other support systems. It is NOT simply
the registry database. If you think it is so easy then I suggest that
you do it and publish the DDL, along with the Data Dictionary, for the
whole thing. If you do it and it works, I'll get you paid for it. Don't
forget the trigger code, in Oracle8 PL/SQL.

> > > You are vastly overestimating the value of competition at the
> > > registry level.
> >
> > As I think that you are totaly mis-understanding how
> channel marketing
> > works. Channel marketing is not competition. Only
> registries are true
> > competition. Channel markets are only a means of leveraging
> the work of
> > others, for the benefit of the channel operator.
>
> Proof by buzzwords?

Those are no more buzzwords than ADR is. It is clear that you do not
have a business background. Might I suggest "The Portable MBA in
Marketing" ISBN 0-471-19367-4. For some basic business introduction for
you.