Pragmatism (was Re: [ppml] Re: 2005-1:Multi-national Business Enablement)
Tom Vest
tvest at pch.net
Mon May 9 14:07:48 EDT 2005
On May 9, 2005, at 12:42 PM, Edward Lewis wrote:
>
> If the Internet has yet to scale one more order of magnitude (from
> about the estimated 1 billion users to the estimated population of the
> earth at 7 billion), the resources that are already regulated along
> national sovereignty boundaries will have to be tapped - and these
> will have to be tapped in accordance with "their" rules. IOW,
> considering all of the resources used to build the Internet today -
> imagine needing to consume the same 9 times over. Where do these
> resources come from?
> Especially because the ITU's managed address space has not run out.
> IPv4's is allegedly (prompting IPv6), so if we deplete v6 also the ITU
> can claim "we've never exhausted an address pool but they have -
> twice!"
> --
Hi Ed,
Trying to parse your question; hoping for further assistance...
First, the only slightly tongue-in-cheek response: do you think the ITU
would be (or be perceived to be) doing as well with their number
management if 8-9 new sovereign states were added to the international
system every day? That's the situation that the RIRs face, because --
at least in some places -- the barriers to becoming a network operator
are relatively low. In perhaps half of the world -- precisely the half
where all resources are *not* strictly aligned with national boundaries
-- once "mere subjects" (read: customers) have broad latitude to secede
whenever they perceive that they can (1) make money, (2) save money, or
(3) fulfill any purpose important enough to justify *to themselves* the
necessary investment. We see an average of nine or so such "secessions"
in the routing table every day -- and *they* are the primary source and
vehicle of Internet expansion, statistically. New networks are the
primary source of new Internet growth -- users, uses, usage, etc.
How many new sovereign national entities do you see being created every
day -- every century? No so many, because existing political entities
prefer a status quo that guarantees them power over their existing
resource base, to a system where those resources may get eroded through
progressive devolution/decentralization. There have always been
arguments that in many cases/places a kind of sovereign-level
devolution/reorganizing could lead to a better, "more efficient"
international system -- but almost no one's buying. I'll spare you the
academic citations, but the point is that "national resource alignment"
is essentially a conservative strategy, not a strategy for growth.
Strict national resource alignment is not an efficient way of
organizing a system that grows in response to transnational supply and
demand -- like the conventional economy, like the Internet. It is,
however, a good strategy for perpetuating national power.
Shameless plug:
http://www.pch.net/resources/papers/the-wealth-of-networks/Vest-
WoN at SIMS-DLS-050316.pdf
TV
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