[address-policy-wg] A comment on 2008-03 & 2007-09

Raul,

On May 30, 2008, at 12:25 PM, Raul Echeberria wrote:
> My comment was in the sense of comparing the scenario with the  
> policy approved vs. the scenario without this policy.

The situations aren't analogous.  There is only one IANA from which  
the RIRs obtain addresses.  There are 5 RIRs and there are many  
organizations which obtain addresses from more than one RIR.  For  
example, if a service provider in Europe were to establish a legal  
presence in (say) Namibia and request address space, what restrictions  
would be placed upon the announcement of that address space and how  
would AfriNIC enforce those restrictions (or even determine they were  
being violated)?

The point is that I view Tony's proposal as an attempt to  
pragmatically deal with the reality that businesses are likely going  
to do what they can to ensure they meet customer requirements,  
regardless of the arbitrary geographical monopolies put in place when  
there was more address space than people could count.  Questions of  
"fairness" get extremely complex when you get into resource scarcity  
(e.g., fair to whom?  Will it be fair that a charity NGO based in  
Geneva will be unable to get any address space whereas DeBeers will be  
able to get as much as they desire?) and I personally think it naive  
to assume that the folks with money aren't going to be able to get  
what they want, regardless of "set asides"...

Regards,
-drc