[arin-ppml] Fairness of banning IPv4 allocations to somecategoryof organization

[Milton L Mueller]

>[1] Section 3.3., "The Transferable Address Block Lease (TABL)," in
>Mueller, "Economic Factors in the Allocation of IP Addresses."
>http://www.itu.int/net/ITU-T/ipv6/
>http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/.../T3B020000020003PDFE.pdf

Tom
Thanks for calling attention to the ITU report, I was actually unaware that it had finally been released publicly. 

Understand what this report is. ITU was authorized by its member states to investigate its possible role in IPv6 address allocation. In connection with that mandate, it commissioned two reports. One, performed by the NAV6 center in Malaysia, investigated the possibility of doing IPv6 allocation by having the ITU delegate address blocks to Country Internet Registries (CIRs). The other, performed by me, investigated the use of “market forces” as an alternative to both ITU delegation and RIR needs assessment in v6 allocation. As was written in the report, “The purpose of [the report] is not necessarily to advocate market-oriented policies, but simply to gain a better understanding of what options exist and what implications they might have for [IPv6] address management.” 

As an organization whose members are nation-states, ITU obviously favors the CIR approach. ITU should be credited, however, with some degree of impartiality and integrity for its willingness to support an exploration of other alternatives. (It is worth noting that its staff's reaction to my critique of needs-based allocation was similar to yours.) 

Contrary to your representation, the report takes full account of the relationship between address allocation and routing, and indeed constitutes one of the first attempts to understand that relationship from the standpoint of institutional economics theory. Obviously, a lot more sophisticated analysis could be and needs to be done (and not just apologetics for the status quo such as yours). The report refers repeatedly to the “interdependence of routing and addressing,” and says in Section 1.1, “The policy problem we are faced with is not, in fact, one of efficiently allocating IP addresses per se. The overarching problem is actually the efficiency and scalability of Internet routing. The possession of IP addresses is significant and valuable only insofar as they can be used to route packets on the public Internet.” Please read section 1.3 for further analysis. 

Your attempt to criticize the report’s approach to the impact of TABLs on routing misses the mark. You commit a simple logical error, or perhaps didn’t actually read the proposal details, or maybe are simply misrepresenting what was said, it is hard to tell. You imply that address blocks would be auctioned when in fact, the report considers and rejects auctions as a method for initial allocation of ipv6 address blocks. See section 3.2. It proposes, instead, that RIRs use fees geared to size of address blocks to allocate resources. The TABL proposal specifies that blocks so allocated cannot be disaggregated and parcelled out to other ASs. By saying that the proposal "would not make the current system any worse or any better with respect to routing table growth" my point was that for routing purposes it matters not at all whether the initial allocation of ipv6 address blocks is based on “need” as defined by RIRs or on the basis of fees, as suggested in the report – what matters is the size of the blocks and the degree to which they are disaggregated. Can you dispute that? 

--MM