[Fwd: [members-discuss] [ncc-announce] RIPE NCC Position On The ITU IPv6 Group]

Fri Feb 26 23:41:27 UTC 2010

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:43:11 -0800
David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:

> On Feb 26, 2010, at 10:22 AM, gordon b slater wrote:
> > I must admit to total confusion over why they need to "grab" IPs
> > from the v6 address space? Surely they don't need the equivalent of
> > band-plans for IP space? Or have I missed some v6 technical point
> > totally?
> 
> The ITU Secretariat and a few member states (Syria being the most
> frequent) point to the inequality of distribution of IPv4 space and
> argue that developing countries must not be left out of IPv6 the same
> way.  They have also suggested that the establishment of "Country
> Internet Registries" (that is, national PTT-based allocation
> registries) could provide competition for the RIRs, thereby using
> market forces to improve address allocation services. 

I think that "PTT" is the operative token here, but for reasons having
nothing to do with competition.  If all they wanted was competition,
the easy answer would be to set up more registries -- or registrars
-- not bounded by geography; as long as the number wasn't too large, it
wouldn't do too much violence to the size of the routing tables.

If a PTT-like body is *the* registry for a country, and if the country
chose to require local ISPs and business to obtain address space from
it, what's the natural prefix announcement to the world?  Right -- that
country's registry prefix, which means that all traffic to that country
just naturally flows through the PTT's routers and DPI boxes.  And it
benefits everyone, right?  It really cuts down on the number of prefixes
we have to worry about....

It's funny -- just yesterday, I was telling my class that the
Internet's connectivity was not like the pre-deregulation telco model.
The latter had O(1) telco/country, with highly regulated
interconnections to anywhere else.  The Internet grew up under the
radar, partly because of the deregulatory climate and partly because
especially in the early days, it wasn't facilities-based -- if you
wanted an international link to a peer or a branch office, you just
leased the circuit.  The result was much richer connectivity than in
the telco world, and -- in some sense -- less "order".  Syria wants to
roll the clock back.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb