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

Hi,

On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 11:01:09AM +0000, Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:
[..]
> When some part of the infrastructure of the Internet is considered
> to be critical, the people responsible for it will build it so that
> it can never fail. They do this by applying fault tolerance techniques.
> Anycasting DNS is a fault tolerance technique. DENIC is asking for
> a policy that understands the need for fault tolerance when an
> organization is managing part of the Internet's critical infrastructure.
> 
> If this policy focuses on the fault tolerance technique then it 
> is doing the wrong things. Policies are not about technology. 
> RIPE policies are political agreements that balance the needs
> of everyone in the RIPE community. This policy needs to focus
> on defining which kinds of "critical infrastructure" are important
> enough for the whole community to justify special allocations.

The policy needs to balance everyones needs (among that: "little extra
routes in the DFZ").

The policy does also need very clear-cut criteria to *decide* whether
something meets the policy or not.  Applying technical criteria is easy
(easier, at least) than a fuzzy term like "critical infrastructure"
that mean something different to whoever reads it.

Commenting on your first example: for the USA, something might very
well be a "critical infrastructure", like the US power grid, and *still*
the rest of the world might not care much if it breaks down... - so
the definition of "criticial infrastructure" is very much localized and
fuzzy.

Gert Doering
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