[bestbits] The decentralization of IP addresses

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

Good evening all,

For what it is worth we have pretty profound issues in Internet policy 
right now which threaten the network as a globalised, interoperable 
construct. It seems to me not terribly useful to spend time discussing, let 
alone reinventing, something that is not only working, but working well.


On 28 November 2015 10:08:41 Cedric Knight <cedric at gn.apc.org> wrote:

> Hi - my first post to bestbits list, cutting down on the cross-posting a
> bit.
>
> On 28/11/15 06:18, David Cake wrote:
>>> On 27 Nov 2015, at 4:49 AM, willi uebelherr <willi.uebelherr at riseup.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> The decentralization of IP addresses.
>>>
>>> We need a completely self-organizing Internet. And this is possible
>>> only through massive decentralization. We can look at the
>>> difficulties at the beginning of the Internet with tolerance. They
>>> were mostly of a technical nature. But today we have other
>>> conditions. And from these other conditions arise other
>>> possibilities.
> [snip]
>>> The decisive factor for this solution that we need in the future no 
>>> Internet Governance.
>>
>> Systems that are geographically based, like the postal and phone
>> systems, involve a great deal of governance. Just ask the ITU. The
>> main difference is that it is largely done by states. Why would your
>> proposal be different?
>
> Good question, but given the possibilities opened up by ICTs, would it
> not be premature to assume that other models *cannot* exist, and that
> managing an address space (or certification such as PKI) always has to
> require any central or hierarchical co-ordination?  There is often an
> assumption that fully decentralised addressing does not scale as it may
> require each node to store a full set of identifiers - however, that's
> not so different from internet routing tables that consist of over half
> a million IP prefixes.  It may be possible to route globally unique
> identifiers and protect them against forgery in a mesh-like system: see
> for example .onion addresses.
>
> Much of the way the net has evolved (for example,
> manufacturer-programmed MAC addresses) is a historical accident,
> including use of global registries.  See Radia Perlman's talk on
> "Folklore of Network Protocols" at
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbZ5ruco0jM
>
>>> No organizations that compete for the award of rights of IP
>>> addresses. No organizations whose livelihood is based on the sale
>>> of global IP addresses.
>>
>> Why would states not compete for the award of rights of IP addresses
>> if they were organised globally? Why do you wish to get rid of the
>> RIRs? How do you think this relates to names, do you think that
>> global generic (as opposed to country) names are a bad idea or is
>> your proposal only for numbers?
>
> Is the (IAB/IETF >) IANA > RIR > LIR > user allocation pattern always
> going to exist?  Fortunately I don't think states have yet tried to
> interfere with RIRs in the way they do with DNS, but that may have been
> simply that they are less visible to policy-makers, and RIRs may need
> protecting.  There is no necessary relationship between ccTLDs and
> states, but states may feel a sense of "ownership" of related TLDs.  The
> public [I]nternet is classically a set of federated services; but
> corporate, governmental and economic forces have in the 21st century
> tended to favour centralisation, with fully decentralised and P2P
> functions partly a reaction in the opposite direction.
>
> I'd suggest the theory and details are more worth raising with IETF/IRTF
> participants like those formalising .onion addresses, TRILL and
> decentralised protocols.  You would first need interoperable
> specifications (or building on top of what we have) and then an economic
> or social mechanism to adopt the new system.  Look at how long IPv6 is
> taking... in the meantime though, IMHO questions about ICANN and IANA
> need to remain high on civil society's agenda.
>
> --
> All best wishes,
>
> Cedric Knight
> (GreenNet)
>
>
>
>
> ----------
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