"Stop trying to help me. It's not broken, and doesn't need to be fixed."
If there is some clear gain in somehow combining these two things, please let me know. I don't think that an RA qualifies as a "gain" since we have an existance proof that we can get along without one of those already. A more interesting prospect to consider is hooking together MAE-East and, say, the FIX. That *might* actually help.
Ah comeon Louie, you really, REALLY want this vanilla ice-cream cone that I have for you! Actually, I think the RA (in the context of coordinated routing registries and route servers) does provide a gain. Virtually all the RIPE papers (ripe81 and derivitives) indicate that a common route registry will become a critical component in the internet. (RIPE has had a functioning RS @ mae-east for a number of years now) The use of such services has several advantages, including reducing the number of peers that you MUST peer with. None of this precludes your ability to set up as many bilateral arraingments as you as an ISP, feel you need. I would expect that ISPs would begin to realize that they function as a route registration service today, even if they don't run a database behind it. When ISPs have a conflict, they can negotiate the answer between them or they can appeal to a neutral, third party. Kind of like giveing your customers a choice... "I have your best interests at heart" or "Here, go ask a neutral party and see if I'm right". I guess that the "existance proof" argument can also be used for why we don't need CIDR or IPv6. We have things that work now, why do something new? -- --bill