There have been a number of rumors concerning that CIX doing registration functions for .COM, .US and some address space. The proposals are premature.
The problem is not that there are too few registries.
CIX is now the most restrictive exchange point. They are now trying to get out of the routing business. They are looking to do something else.
The Registry Toolset is one of the things the CIX will try to do.
There are a number of different things going on. The complexity level is rising.
Currently, the current system does not scale, there is too much manual processing, users cannot preview changes, policy enforcement is murky and there is little backend coupling.
There are a number of pieces of the puzzle: RIPE, RFC1466bis, RA, NICs, DNS and BIND, and CIX (which isn't involved in these issues at this time).The CIX can do it wrong by being overambitious, being ignorant of the technical or political issues or by working on something that is irrelevant to the problem.
The CIX is asking what it can do to help.
The CIX will get involved with the OPS groups in IETF, make proposals in neglected areas, develop a registry toolset, try to coordinate related efforts, possibly run a new lightweight registry later on. The CIX does not see it as owners of this work.
The CIX suggests that registries are autonomous. The CIX suggests that registries should be able to act as agents for other registries.
David Conrad from APNIC speaks The CIX is a membership organization. How would these tools to be of benefit to members versus non-members?
Paul said that there is still a sense of everybody should work together and then everyone wins in the CIX. Vince Fuller from BBN Planet asks what the benefit this would be to CIX member? Elise from Merit said that all of us my benefit from such work. Also, RFC 1466 does talk about agents a bit, but more work needs to be down.
Daniel from RIPE-NCC asks for more information about making Policy Enforcement Obvious and Clear.. Jerry says that he believes the policy has be described in some kind of rule set that can be destributed amongs all registries. Daniel said that about 90% is spent on policy checking and 10% on the actual process of engaging the registration.
It was also suggested that paying a non-profit to run the registration process, but the CIX may not be the appropriate group.
Why not do this under the Internet Software Consortium? The CIX Board thinks this a good use of Paul's time.