[ppml] geo addressing

[Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com]

> and i do think that a city who compels, through its permit or licensing
> process, carriers to interconnect inside the city limits so that traffic
> between residents never has to leave the city, will be more competitive.

I would like to see a policy that enables this but
does not require this. It is a political decision whether
or not to mandate action, and I think that addressing schemes 
should avoid meddling in national, and local politics.

> and under such a regime, the city would very likely have its own address
> space, which would be available to residents (businesses and people) on
> the same basis that street/road addresses are available.

Ideally, a geotopological addressing policy would not prevent
a city from doing this in countries in which the citizens
want this to be done.

> but in the sense of trying to drive this from the RIR side, it just 
can't.
> 
> without the local government mandating local interconnects, then no IXP
> could do this, and no RIR could make any sensible or relevant policy
> covering this.  the closest an RIR could come is creating a membership
> class for city governments, teaching city governments how to do this 
kind
> of thing, writing white papers about how it can be done and why it's 
good.

As I said before, I don't think that it is necessary to mandate
local interconnects. Geotopological addressing is in addition to
classic IPv6 addressing. In areas where the IXPs and network operators
cannot organize themselves to interconnect voluntarily or where
the governments don't mandate interconnection, it is still possible
to use classic addresses and achieve Internet access in a less 
optimal way.

RIRs can only deal with addressing policies and with education. So
it is feasible for the RIRs to create and administer geotopological
addresses and it is feasible for them to run education programs that
explain the optimal configuration for the use of geotopological addresses
which does involve rich local interconnections in or near each
city that is a center of aggregation.

--Michael Dillon