North American Network Operators Group

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  • From: Unknown
  • Date: Mon May 22 23:33:51 2006
  • Options:

	A) The socalist approach
	B) The capitalist approach

Right now, the registries use option A.  Addresses are allocated "to
each according to need" and the regional registries that charge (APNIC
and RIPE-NCC) request "from each according to ability" (at least to
some extent).  As a result, since the definition of "need" is hard to
pin down, a bureaucracy is created and (since there is no other
acceptible way of verifying needs and/or reducing the address
allocation rate), huge amounts of paperwork and oodles of tedious
forms are necessary to submit requests.

Every time someone (who me?) brings up option B, we go chasing merrily
down one or more of the following ratholes:

	1) we need to conserve route table space, lets charge for that,
	   not addresses (irrelevant)
	2) AT&T (or some other evil speculator) will buy up all the
	   address space (and ISPs are just going to sit idly by?)
	3) if you charge, then poor organizations can't connect
	   to the Internet (so who's paying for their connectivity?)
	4) you can't charge for addresses because they're just
	   numbers and have no value (tell that to the US Treasury)

Regardless of the validity of any of these ratholes, they are missing
the point -- without some OBJECTIVELY VERIFIABLE CRITERIA, the
registries must rely on people being honest and forthright about their
requirements.  Money (e.g., a charge per address) has proven to be a
pretty effective objectively verifiable criteria to determine whether
someone *really* needs the address space they are requesting.

However, since option B is theo-politically infeasible for whatever
reason, you get option A, with increasingly draconian rules and ever
growing mountains of paperwork.  Life is harsh.

>If there is a finite resource that needs to be managed, it should be
>done in a fair way for all players, and right now i don't think 
>that's not the case if we look at the globe as a whole.

What is "fair"?

Is it fair early adopters have (mutliples of) /8s and will never need
to go through the registry hassle?  Is it fair that the current
allocation policies are (statistically speaking) conserving address
space to the benefit of the large ISPs, most of which are in the US?
Would it be fairer if the registries allocated /14s (or /19s) to
everyone regardless of requirements?  Should everyone who wants an IP
address be given one, regardless of what they'll use it for?  Should
addresses only be given to ISPs?

The registries try to be "fair", from their perspective.  Presumably,
the concern you are expressing here is that the regional registries
have implemented the various policies somewhat differently.  I believe
this was a specific goal of RFC 1466 which created the multiple
registries in the first place.  The registries are trying to
coordinate policies, but we're somewhat constrained by the different
communities we serve (e.g., what is considered a "small ISP" in the US
is likely to be larger than most of the ISPs in the AP region).

>Fix the rules, 

Not to pick on you in particular, but I didn't see a lot of comment
from you or other people on the registry guidelines draft.  Please
indicate what rules need to be fixed (I have my own set, but I'd like
to see other people's).

>open up more registrys wich all apply the same rules,

Applying all the same rules would tend to imply ignoring the
differences in the development in the Internet throughout the world.
Is this what people really want (honest question -- there are
arguments on both sides)?

Oh yeah, check out how many bits there are for registries in IPv6...

>maybe someone needs to audit the registrys to make sure that things
>are done correct, 

Who and who would pay them?

>and have them compete on speed and effectiveness and cost.

I think we agree this should be the end goal.  How do we get there?

For those who are interested in this gunk, there will be 2 BOFs at
the Montreal IETF:

    Pricing of Internet Addresses and Route Advertisements (PIARA)

and

    Internet Registry Evolution (IRE)

I'm sure both BOFs will be non-controversial and quite sedate.  Stop
on by if you want to catch up on your sleep... :-).

Regards,
-drc

P.S. So which rathole are we going to go down this time?  30 quatloos
on rathole #4 (it's my favorite 'cause it's so silly (Hi Brian!)).
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