[102530] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eliot Lear)
Tue Feb 19 02:41:43 2008
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:23:53 +0100
From: Eliot Lear <lear@cisco.com>
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
CC: David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>,
"<michael.dillon@bt.com>" <michael.dillon@bt.com>, nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <20080218231747.0d0ccc6c@cs.columbia.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Steve,
> Yah. A market exists today, though it's perforce sub rosa.
>
> An interesting operational question is how to prevent deaggregation as
> a result of a market. If, say, a company isn't using half of its
> address space, could it sell that half, to several other parties? Can
> that be prevented by market means?
>
This is a strong argument for regulation of the market. A regulated
market could provide liquidity needed by those who would otherwise find
<unregulated> means to accomplish their ends (such as making private
deals that are perhaps undetectable). It provides an incentive for
people to do the right thing, assuming the cost of doing so is not
prohibitive (a big assumption if ever there was one).
Eliot
