Daniel, So, lets say we go ahead a float IP address space and anyone can buy whatever prefix they think need and have the cash for. What happens to the routing tables? The reason the BOF back in '96 was entitled "Pricing of Internet Addresses and Routing Announcements' was that the folks who seriously considered the idea realized that in the IPv4 CIDR world we live in, selling address space without somehow tying those sales into some sort of market for routing prefixes was a recipe for "fun", or at least lots of prefix length filters and subsequently more unhappiness. If someone can figure out how to get the ISPs of the world to participate in a routing prefix market, then it might be worth revisiting this idea. Note that there is nothing stopping establishing a routing prefix market now, so it could be done prior to changing address allocation policies. Rgds, -drc On Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 10:27 AM, Daniel Golding wrote:
Treating IP space as a commodity is no more strange than trading financial options or other derivatives, or, for that matter, intellectual property. Bits, numbers, and agreements all hold value outside of the context of purely physical property.
Sadly, this sort of idea tends to stomp on the socialistic sort of idealism that is particularly prevalent amongst some in the IETF and NANOG communities, who feel it would leave out the "little guys". I suspect that any real world float of IP address space would result in a pretty low price per ip address, if the market was sufficiently liquid. It might be cheaper for a little guy to get a few $K together for IPs, then to build a network capable of "justifying" a /20 from an RIR.
Maybe ARIN should reinvent itself as a mercantile exchange?
- Dan
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 bmanning@karoshi.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 07:44 AM, Bill Nickless wrote:
As a thought experiment, think of how the IPv4 addressing situation (bogon advertisements, allocations, explosion of routing table sizes, etc) would be different if the IP community treated IP addresses as a commodity.
PIARA, The Sequel. Take N+1. Action! Anybody got any rubber balls Peter Lothberg can monopolize this time? :-)
I still have mine, plus the five or six I took away from the others in the room. ... psst, buddy, want to buy an "8"
Sorry to be flip. In case you haven't already, see: http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/piara/index.shtml
Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
Rgds, -drc