[102531] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Tue Feb 19 03:09:08 2008
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:33:53 +0000
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Eliot Lear <lear@cisco.com>
Cc: David Conrad <drc@virtualized.org>,
"<michael.dillon@bt.com>"
<michael.dillon@bt.com>, nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <47BA8409.80305@cisco.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:23:53 +0100
Eliot Lear <lear@cisco.com> wrote:
> 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).
I have no problem with regulating markets -- I tend to think they work
better that way. (He ducks, fending off the attacks of maddened
libertarians...)
> 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).
>
That's something the market will do very well: balancing the profits
against the cost of renumbering.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
