[address-policy-wg] Some observations on the differences in the various transfer policy proposals

Hi Izumi,

Thank you for your comments. As always, making reasonably accurate  
predictions of the future is hard, and setting up policies that will  
be effective in the future is very challenging.

One possible way is to look at "what if" scenarios and see how  
particular frameworks could survive various potential events and see  
what the implications may be.

What if...

    the registry imposes the same constraints of demonstrated  
efficiency of utilization of existing addresses and demonstrated need  
on access to the registry, and alternate registries do appear. What  
then? Can the registry pull these alternate registries back into a  
coherent whole again? How could that possibly happen? Where is the  
authority that says "this registry is the authoritative one! You MUST  
ignore all others?" I personally simply cannot see how such a  
situation is resolvable in any useful manner. And what happens to a  
market function in the face of such attempts to impose constraints on  
buyers and presumably on sellers? As far as I can see this path poses  
excessive levels of risk to the integrity of the registry function,  
the coherence of addresses and to the survival of the Internet itself.  
The problem is that we will continue to need a working fully  
functional IPv4 network throughout this transition ot IPv6 and if we  
break that IPv4 network its hard to see that "just use IPv6" is a  
useful response.

What if...

   the registry simply registers transfers without imposing extraneous  
constraints on the registrants. i.e. the registry simply says "yes"?  
What is the downside here? The most commonly cites risks that I have  
heard is routing table bloat and the formation of a market in  
addresses. In the case of the routing table, the observation I would  
like to make is that there has really never been any constrain on the  
routing table so far and the routing table continues to be populated   
in a manner that 50% of the routing table are more specifics and this  
has been the case for years (http://bgp.potaroo.net/cgi-bin/plota?file=%2fvar%2fdata%2fbgp%2fas2.0%2fbgp-spec-perc.txt&descr=Specifics%20as%20%25%20of%20FIB%20entries%20(153312%2f285680)&ylabel=Specifics%20as%20%25%20of%20FIB%20entries%20(153312%2f285680)&with=step 
). So my response would be that any notion that registry policies and  
constraints would have any effect whatsoever on the routing table size  
would have to address the apparent contradiction that so far the  
policies related to allocation have had effectively no effect on the  
routing table bloat to date. And what about markets? Markets will form  
in any case. And, as I understand conventional thinking relating to  
market behaviour, the pricing function is a form of equiliberation  
between buyers and sellers. And open market allows potential sellers  
to have exposure in front of the largest possible pool of buyers (a  
positive aspect for market behaviour I thought) and buyers to be able  
to see the entire set of sellers (again a positive aspect). What is  
the price escalates? Well as has been pointed out before such a  
movement acts as a clear market signal about the imperative to  
transition to Ipv6 _while the Ipv4 network is still a coherent and  
functional network to support the transition_)

So I see the notion that "we should change as little as possible and  
we should cling desperately to our cherished allocation policies even  
when there is nothing left to allocate" as not being a conservative  
notion, nor even a quaint and amusing notion, but an astonishingly  
radical and extremely risky notion. In my view attempting to tie the  
by-then anachronistic allocation policies to the registry function to  
be a course of action that imperils the coherence of the address  
system for the entire Internet, imperils any hope of transitioning to  
IPv6 and provides impetus to the industry at large to spin off into  
all directions to try and save their own investments and own customer  
base. At that point there is no Internet left. I just cannot see why  
such a radical and risky course of action can be seen as being  
"conservative" or "safe" when to me  its entirely the opposite!

   Geoff

   Disclaimer: These are, as always, entirely my own views on this  
situation.