North American Network Operators Group
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Re: IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

  • From: Geoff Huston
  • Date: Tue Feb 19 19:10:47 2008



David Conrad wrote:

Steve,

On Feb 18, 2008, at 11:33 PM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: 
This is a strong argument for regulation of the market.  A regulated
market could provide liquidity needed by those who would otherwise
find <unregulated> means to accomplish their ends (such as making
private deals that are perhaps undetectable).


I have no problem with regulating markets -- I tend to think they work
better that way.

Given the decentralized nature of the Internet and the lack of a single legal/policy regime that covers it, the challenge is in identifying viable candidates for the regulator.

That is a big challenge in this space, considering that there is no particular national alignment in the address structure.

The approach in the proposals so far is to attempt to create a framework around recognition of market-based outcomes that act as implicit constraints on the market. The proposals so far for recognition of address transfers in ARIN, RIPE and APNIC all attempt to define a class of transactions that would be regarded as eligible for entering in their respective address registries. That said, they each propose a different set of constraints!

Geoff