From: Nick Williams <nmw@haven.ios.com>
If a registries' actions or lack thereof hurt someone else's business they may end up being liable in court for it
Oh, great, let's put the registries out of business. I mean, who needs the aggravation, and the threat of being sued?
I'm not arguing in favor of anyone suing any registry, nor am I threatening to do so myself; I'm merely pointing out that some fellow out there might have the reasons, resources and incentives to go after registries in court.
I urge registries to consider charging for their address space delegation services
This is absolutely not the solution. This still does nothing to slow the growth of the routing tables, which is the *real problem*, &^%!@$*#&^%! I mean, how is it going to stop me moving from provider A to provider B and wanting to take my addresses with me if I had to pay for the addresses?
The only charging scheme that I can see working is to charge people for advertising routes, with the charge related to the scope over which the advertisement is seen. That way, there's a direct relationship between the amount of resources consumed, and the amount charged, which is utterly fair.
Routes have two costs: they represent IP address space (of which there is a shortage right now) which is used inefficiently, and they use up router resources in a menner that's inversely proportional to the amount of IP address space the route represents. Hence you have two opposing costs. I'm arguing that economics have to enter the picture for any application for IP address space a registry receives. ISP/NSPs can deal with some of theis on their own, but registries are at the root of all IP address allocations, so therefore they are a good place to look towards for an injection of economic realities into a process that so far has seemed inexpensive: obtaining usable IP address space. Unfortunately you cannot retroactively, unilaterally amend the many existing contracts between ISPs, NSPs and customers, so we have to look to charging new entrants only, and old participants when their contracts come up for renewal. My goal in asking that the registries charge for their services is: better services, better allocations of IP address space (i.e. allotion of IP address space to those who are serious about using it).
Note that if you have a "fully" "portable" address (i.e. one advertised over a global scope), your monthly bill will go up as the Internet gets larger, under this scheme...
Sure, but such a scheme cannot be implemented right now. How is an organization going to figure out that one particular /24 can be charged while another can't be?
If registries can make decent allocation decisions ... then I argue that routing table growth will be curbed and that IPv4 address space utilization effeciency will rise.
First, you're talking about two completely separate problems. Let's keep address space utilization out of it for now, OK?
But the registries don't seem willing to stop considering IP address space exhaustion as a BIG problem, and I don't blame them. We have two problems which are interrelated; you can't ignore one and solve the other, because the one you ignore may become far worse as a result of your solution.
Second, even if registries did allocate addresses optimally, what happens when those sites move around, something the registries have no control over?
Ah, well, these are new customers to other NSPs, so NSPs can refuse to take their CIDR holes elsewhere. If these new entrants go directlry to NAPs, then they are not likely to move, but if they do, then they may have a hard time getting peers to take their long CIDR holes. Then again, folk who go to the NAPs end up having few small blocks in the long run, because they tend to be successful (I hope, maybe I'm wrong?) and so the registries have less misgivings about giving these /16s rather than /20s.
"Sorry, we are only able to provide you with partial Internet service at the moment because Sprint doesn't like the addresses we assigned you".
It is costly, as the solution is to become a client of Sprint. So, everyone, can we find a solution?
That may solve it for Sprint, but suppose you have the same problem with otehr major providers? Do you have to get a link to each of them? When does this cease to become distinguishable (costwise) for charging for routes - actually, the latter would probably be less expensive.
You're right, charging for route announcements is something that has to happen. I've argued this myself too. But what about the registries worries wrt IP address space exhaustion?
Noel
Nick