On 28 Nov 2004, at 19:18, David Robb wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2004, Ewen McNeill wrote:
(a) scarcity: the number of possible IP addresses (4 billion) is rather less than the number of possible domain names (37 ** 63 per name segment)
I'd hope that instead of using an economic disincentive to stop people from using up large amounts of IP space, the system of having to justify your IP usage would be sufficient.
I think that's naive: telling lies is cheap, and when you encourage people to tell lies by removing the economic disincentive to apply, the cost of telling what's a lie and what isn't goes up. APNIC isn't operated on a for-profit basis, as far as I know. They have costs, which means they need an income from somewhere. The fees are determined by the policy, which the members set. So there's an argument to say that APNIC members are paying exactly what they want to pay.
As has been pointed out by others, there are number of organisations sitting on significant IP address blocks.
When you figure out the mechanism to change the terms under which resources were allocated long before APNIC ever existed, you should let them know. Be sure to remember that the mechanism probably needs to work in every legal jurisdiction on the planet.
(b) impact on other people's systems: a DNS delegation just sits quitely on a couple of DNS servers in a corner, minding its own business, until someone happens to ask about it; a prefix advertised into the global routing table ends up occupying space in every router in the world with a "full table" and being shuttled around between them fairly often.
But with none of this money that is paid to APNIC being shared amongst all of the router owners, I don't really see this as a viable argument.
I don't understand the preoccupation with money; the fees that APNIC receive are used to pay their operating expenses. APNIC have a duty to act responsibly. An assignment policy which caused massive increase in state bloat in the DFZ would not be responsible -- and furthermore, would probably result in widespread filtering of the prefixes assigned on that basis, rendering the addresses useless anyway.
(c) volume: a block of IP addresses consists of multiple addresses; at the US$1250/year mark, that's over 1000 usable addresses. If you were to get 1000 $20 domain names, it'd cost more than US$1250/year :-)
But since an IP address isn't an individually advertisable/usable entity, and only a block of IPs is, wouldn't it be better to compare a block of IP addresses with a domain name?
There is nothing to stop anybody advertising a single IP address to anybody. The problem is getting people to listen. Joe