[address-policy-wg] 2006-05 New Policy Proposal (PI Assignment Size)

> How about taking the potential money received for PI to finance
> a better BGP / routing technology or at least memory for poor
> ISP's ?

Can we please kill this "let's get RIPE/NCC to charge more money for X
so that we can give it to Y" idea for once and for all?

The RIPE NCC is not a taxation agency.  Let's not waste time proposing
to turn it into one.

> Do you remember the old "private modems are bad and will
> destroy the phone network" arguments from former Bundespost ?

Yes, we all remember that.  Just as we remember the times when - due to
routing table growth - a whole pile of different types of equipment were
rendered defunct due to their inability to deal with a full routing
table, whether through RIB or FIB memory deficiency.  At each stage,
this cost ISPs a lot of money to rectify.

The Bundespost argument (repeated by pretty much all telcos worldwide,
as far as I can tell) was to a large extent FUD based on presumption and
fear of the unknown.  Routing table growth is a well defined phenomenon
which costs real money to deal with.

[Incidentally, we also remember the NFSnet $15 domain tax and the way
that it was declared illegal.]

> The PI routing issue is a technical challenge which
> cries for an technical solution (yes, large distributed databases
> do exist) and not for an additional administration.

The "PI routing issue" does not exist, at least in the terms that you're
using here.  What exists is a large growth in routing table size, due to
- inter-alia - PI announcements, PA subnet announcements and the fast
organic growth of full PA netblocks.

Also, large distributed databases are of no real relevance to switching
IP packets at 10G speeds.

However, this is not particularly relevant to proposal 2006-05.  The
proposal may - slightly - increase the rate of uptake of PI assignments
in the RIPE catchment area, and this may proportionally increase the
number of prefixes in the routing tables.  But the only thing that's
stopping people from registering /24's at the moment where they really
need less than this amount of space, is their inclination not to lie to
RIPE.  Removing this (almost) requirement to lie to get a /24 is not
going to open up the flood gates and cause the internet to collapse.

Nick