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