[Irtf-rr] Just an idea for a self organiziong IPv6 address space network

[Curtis Villamizar]

In message <uh7isyrgnlk.fsf@ferrari.sics.se>, Bengt Ahlgren writes:
> Xiaowei Yang <yxw@cordelia.lcs.mit.edu> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > As an example, if an global address prefix costs a significant amount
> > of fortune, perhaps many small networks / local ISPs are willing to
> > take address blocks from their providers. If becoming a visible entry
> > in the global BGP table costs money, perhaps many networks would want
> > to be aggregated into their providers' entries.
> > 
> > By this allocation, ISPs can still operate if the rest of the Internet
> > collapses, because dynamic failures do not terminate the business
> > relationships and do not change the address blocks a domain owns.
> > 
> > We do not need algorithms to determine which ASes are the top level
> > ones. Whichever affords the money can buy a global unique address
> > prefix.
> 
> [...]
> 
> This sounds nice in theory, but who is going to "sell" the address
> blocks?  How do you design this market so that the market can decide
> the proper price?  To me it sounds similar to the auctions of 3G
> licenses in many European countries, which must be regarded as
> fiascos.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bengt


I agree that the idea of auctioning IP addresses is flawed.  The idea
hasn't seriously come up since around 1995 when it was soundly
rejected by the community.  There was little percieved benefit and
plenty of opportunity for abuse.

I don't think that was Bengt's suggestion.  Bengt should look at the
archives of the CIDRd mailing list (former IETF WG).  There was
considerable discussion (huge amount) about "address lending",
including discussions of how address lending policies were bad for the
Internet because they led to small providers going for small PI
(provider independent) address blocks.  This issue was whether a
smaller provider would have to renumber all of their customers if they
switched previders.  Renumbering on that scale is infeasible, whether
using IPv4 or IPv6.  It is an administrative problem related to
business autonomy, security, and trust, not so much a technical one.

In practice, the more strongly you try to enforce an address lending
policy the more you encourage application for PI addresses.  In doing
so, you make the problem you are trying to fix *much* worse.

Curtis