[address-policy-wg] Re: RIPE Access Policy Change Request to allow allocations to critical infrastructure

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 04:41:31PM +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> > what's special about ARIN's or ICANN's network, as opposed to the
> > network that runs google.com?
> ARIN (or ICANN or AFNIC or DENIC) manage public resources.

I don't claim that ARIN or ICANN or DENIC are not special, or are not
important for the functioning of the Internet as a whole.

But what's special about *their network*?  In which way is their *network*
different from any order garden variety customer network?

Answer: from a technical point of view, it isn't.  It's routing IP packets, 
it has upstream ISPs, and name resolution is done just fine via DNS.
(Root name servers *are* special, because they can't be resolved via DNS
(obviously)).

>From a user point of view, ICANN, ARIN, DENIC, and whoever are even less 
special.  If any of those networks falls off the earth for a day, the
average user won't even notice - but if Google is offline, they *will* 
notice.


> > I'd say Google is much more critical to the average network user...
> May be but it is a private and for-profit company. It does not manage
> a public resource.

In which way makes "manage a public resource" a network infrastructure
"critical"?  Why isn't whitehouse.gov a "critical network infrastructure"?

(To repeat myself: I have no doubts that all these instutitions are
very important for the well-being of the network.  But IP being what it
is, their network infrastructure is "just any other network").

Gert Doering
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