Kremen's Buddy?

Wed Sep 13 01:52:27 UTC 2006

On Sep 12, 2006, at 8:46 PM, Joe Abley wrote:

>> In any kind of free market system, competition would have  
>> bitchslapped the
>> current ARIN way of doing things a long, long time ago.
>
> I'm not an economist, and this is not a policy list, so I have  
> nothing to say about that here.

Wrong, on all three counts ;-)

You make a living, at least sometimes, making networks do more or  
better for the same or less. That makes you a practicing/applied  
economist at least (sorry).

Competition in this case could only lead to a race to the bottom, as  
the RIR processes that (attempt to) guarantee a tight fit between  
address allocation and actual production requirements give way to  
highest-bidder / lowest-requirements wins. Such a shift might serve  
the interests of those whose pockets are deeper than their interest  
in the long-term viability of the Internet, but only at the expense  
of the rest of the operator community, and their customers, present  
and future.

TV