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Tue Feb 4 19:09:58 UTC 2003

Jack,

Tuesday, February 4, 2003, 8:24:58 AM, you wrote:
>> A flag day is not possible for changing the infrastructure of any
>> network operation that is large.
JB> That is true. However, there comes a day when enough people are implementing
JB> a technology that one can make the decision to flip the switch on their
JB> network.

You are willing to wait 10-15 years before seeing any improvement in
service?  You think people will bother to develop, ship and buy
enhancements that will not be useful for 10-15 years?

JB> While there is no single authority, I'd be happy with a US and
JB> European based authorities for their respective companies.

There is no single authority for U.S. companies' network operations.
There is not single authority for European companies' network
operations.  Each has tens (or maybe hundreds) of thousands of
"authorities".

JB> happy if whois data was enforced to be accurate again. 555-5555 is not a
JB> valid phone number the last time I checked yet it's listed all over whois

You are confusing network operations with network address assignment.
There IS a single global authority for the top of the global, telephone
numbering scheme and it carefully delegates authority down the tree.
Hence the fact that the 555-* numbers are reserved is because the North
American Numbering Plan is under a single authority.

The topic being discussed in this thread is not subject to any such
authority hierarchy.

To the extent that you might want to claim that IP addresses are like
phone numbers, they differ in this specific regard:  although there is
an assignment hierarchy, the numbers, themselves, do not reflect that
heirarchy.  Hence there is no space-efficient way of noting an authority
chain, other than entering every single IP address ever assigned, all in
one big data base.

Alas, that ain't feasible. At a minimum, it is essentially impossible to
keep such a database up to date.

d/
-- 
 Dave <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
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