Market-based address allocation

Wed Apr 30 20:50:59 UTC 2003

At 03:43 PM 4/30/2003 -0500, Jack Bates wrote:

>Actually, your entire argument starts off very poorly.

In retrospect, I agree--it was ambiguous.  I was trying to suggest two 
things simultaneously, because I think both are necessary.

   - Treat IPv4 netblocks as a commodity
   - Recover costs on a per-advertisement basis
     (in addition to bandwidth charges)

>You are stating that IP addresses should be treated as a commodity, yet 
>what you are really trying to state is that routing advertisements should 
>be treated as a commodity. These are two different concepts.

No, IP address blocks should be treated as a commodity.  Carrying a routing 
advertisement should be a paid-for service, or part of a peering settlement.

>If we pay for advertisements, large providers will just work it into their 
>peering agreements and then collect money from their customers for their 
>adverts.You'd also have to figure out who pays who? Do I get paid for 
>every route sent to me? I usually have 120,000+ routes sitting in my 
>router. Please send me my money.

Exactly right.  That's precisely the incentive we desire, because it would 
encourage people to use provider-based addressing when possible.  It would 
also allow people to be multi-homed, but if they want it they will have to 
pay something for it.  The downstreams would pass along the costs of 
carrying the advertisement to the customer, where it belongs.

>Without mandating necessity, I'd also point out that there would no longer 
>be IPv4 address space available except at outrageous prices for smaller 
>networks that wish to multi-home and have their own netblocks.

Outrageous pricing assumes scarcity.  Are IPv4 addresses really that 
scarce?  And would they be scarce if people could buy and sell them on the 
open market?

===
Bill Nickless    http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless      +1 630 252 7390
PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7     nickless at mcs.anl.gov