[58099] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Market-based address allocation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (bmanning@karoshi.com)
Wed Apr 30 18:02:09 2003
From: bmanning@karoshi.com
To: nickless@mcs.anl.gov (Bill Nickless)
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 15:04:07 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20030430163110.037bc458@pop.mcs.anl.gov> from "Bill Nickless" at Apr 30, 2003 04:36:03 PM
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
> At 03:43 PM 4/30/2003 -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
> >Without mandating necessity, I'd also point out that there would no longer
> >be IPv4 address space available except at outrageous prices for smaller
> >networks that wish to multi-home and have their own netblocks.
>
> At 02:10 PM 4/30/2003 -0700, bmanning@karoshi.com wrote:
>
> > Oh... sorry, are folks really seriously wanting
> > to treat integers as a marketable commodity?
>
> I'm confused--are IPv4 netblocks so valuable that we can't expect the
> market to set a reasonable price, or are IPv4 netblocks (sets of integers)
> so worthless that they're not worth the trouble of trading at all?
>
> Bill Nickless http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless +1 630 252 7390
Oh, I expect that I beleive that some folks are so confused by
the smoke/mirrors of ISP politics that they are willing to
pay good money to have their name associated with a prefix.
and not just any prefix mind you, one that starts with 192 or
is /16 or longer. ISPs treat those things as golden and will
transit bits around from such things w/ impunity. Of course
if these prefixes become a commodity, then I get to impune
intellectual property on my prefix. e.g. 8 (tm) and
everyone who uses 8 must pay me a royalty. Equally, if these
things become a commodity, some studly wallet will buy them all
and then where will you be? Rapidly moving to IPv6 I expect. :)
As mentioned earlier in this thread, the value is not the prefix
or its length, its the ability to get and maintain a prefix in
the routing systems of the sites you wish to communicate with.
the slot is valuable, not what you place in it.
e.g. the numbers, in and of themselves, are worthless.
however, if I can get ANL to transit my packets by using
130.202.0.0/16 numbers as the source addresses for packets
I generate, that may have value.
even more value may be obtained if I can convince rafts of
more dewey-eyed neophytes to pass my bits around with that
prefix as the origin of my sourced packets.
in the end, its not the prefix, its the routing table slot.
