On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:43:11 -0800 David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org> wrote:
On Feb 26, 2010, at 10:22 AM, gordon b slater wrote:
I must admit to total confusion over why they need to "grab" IPs from the v6 address space? Surely they don't need the equivalent of band-plans for IP space? Or have I missed some v6 technical point totally?
The ITU Secretariat and a few member states (Syria being the most frequent) point to the inequality of distribution of IPv4 space and argue that developing countries must not be left out of IPv6 the same way. They have also suggested that the establishment of "Country Internet Registries" (that is, national PTT-based allocation registries) could provide competition for the RIRs, thereby using market forces to improve address allocation services.
I think that "PTT" is the operative token here, but for reasons having nothing to do with competition. If all they wanted was competition, the easy answer would be to set up more registries -- or registrars -- not bounded by geography; as long as the number wasn't too large, it wouldn't do too much violence to the size of the routing tables. If a PTT-like body is *the* registry for a country, and if the country chose to require local ISPs and business to obtain address space from it, what's the natural prefix announcement to the world? Right -- that country's registry prefix, which means that all traffic to that country just naturally flows through the PTT's routers and DPI boxes. And it benefits everyone, right? It really cuts down on the number of prefixes we have to worry about.... It's funny -- just yesterday, I was telling my class that the Internet's connectivity was not like the pre-deregulation telco model. The latter had O(1) telco/country, with highly regulated interconnections to anywhere else. The Internet grew up under the radar, partly because of the deregulatory climate and partly because especially in the early days, it wasn't facilities-based -- if you wanted an international link to a peer or a branch office, you just leased the circuit. The result was much richer connectivity than in the telco world, and -- in some sense -- less "order". Syria wants to roll the clock back. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb