FCC and ARIN

[David R. Conrad]

Hi,

>This makes the most sense since I've started  reading this list.

That Fleming says the FCC is considering taking on IP address
management?  Government intervention is, of course, always an option,
although it would likely mean the scope of ARIN would be reduced to
only the US.  I personally don't think the US government has shown
itself to be the best administrator for limited resources, however
given the large ISPs are already multi-national, I suspect they could
get around any perhaps inappropriate restrictions that might be
applied (in the worst case).

>What is an IP address really worth?

Geoff Huston proposed an answer to this question at the PIARA BOF held
in Montreal.  The short answer is "what the buyer is willing to pay
that the seller is willing to accept".  A single /24 is not likely to
have much value.  I've heard /16s are running between US $30,000 and
US $60,000 or so, but of course wouldn't know for sure since the
registries do not recognize such transfers.

>But is this all an attempt to get the routings to kind of 
>be like zipcodes?

No.  I believe the point of ARIN is to create a non-profit industry
driven organization which can allocate the resources (IP addresses and
AS numbers) without government intervention.  The registries do try to
promote routability of addresses (although not in the way I think you
mean -- you can't tell where a machine is located by just its address --
you need additional information (e.g., what is contained in the
routing tables)), but the registry's primary goal is to manage the
address space to insure there is sufficient addresses to meet the
requirements of the Internet community.

>I will see how Minnesota reacts to having control of the *.*.mn.us
>IP adresses. 

These two (*.*.mn.us and IP addresses) are orthogonal concepts.

>Thanks for getting to the heart of the matter. It makes it look
>more like an accounting chore. Which it really is, anyway.

Yup.  Fleming keeps going to ridiculous efforts to call this an
economic or political excercise.  Allocation of addresses is a
technical activity and should be done in the most efficient way that
best manages the limited resource.  To go back to your original
statement, I don't believe the US government has demonstrated a high
level of efficiency in managing such resources, it could probably be
made to work.  I would think this would be a last resort however.

Regards,
-drc