[governance] IPv6 address allocations to DOD

[Milton L Mueller]

Ian:
You raise a good question but one that is bound to make certain people uncomfortable.

> -----Original Message-----
> What I do have, following McTims research, is that the 
> justification appears to be a concept called NCW (Network-
> centric warfare). Would it not be fair, then, to allocate 
> and reserve blocks of the same size for the military of
> each nation state so that we have a level playing (sic) field for
> network-centric warfare? 

The best assumption I can make is that your question is rhetorical and you are trying to highlight the problems associated with the militarization of cyberspace. Or, maybe you are serious? 

If the latter, why should RIRs (or anyone else outside a military apparatus) do _anything_ to facilitate network-centric warfare in any way?

Secondly, if you do push the internet into a political logic dictated by nation-states, then it is illogical to expect a more powerful nation-state to cede its advantage (if there is such an advantage) by granting equality to other states, which are its rivals or even enemies.

Despite all the talk we hear about how governments bring rules and order to cyberspace, the primordial political fact is that across states, and especially in military affairs, there is basic anarchy between and among nations. So it is likely that the allocation of resources on the internet, insofar as it is politically and militarily driven, will reflect the power inequalities among nation-states. So be careful what you ask for. 

I suggest that despite all the hostility to markets that is routinely displayed on this list, that allocation according to basic principles of supply and demand looks pretty humane and rational by comparison.  

The apologia for "needs based allocation" that has been floated here overlooks one of its most important shortcomings: in engineering, "need" is defined WITHOUT REGARD TO ECONOMIC SCARCITY. Therefore, in principle, if I or the US military or anyone could prove that they "need" all of the IPv4 or IPv6 space for some implementation of a network, in principle they should get it. The fact that one year later, or three weeks or a decade later someone else might be able to demonstrate need for the same amount of addresses and not get them because they have already been allocated to others is not taken into consideration. Needs based allocations exempt requestors from paying any kind of social opportunity cost. 

Another fact: when McTim accurately describes the difference between the definition of "need" in the IPv4 world (based on number of hosts actually needing individual IP addresses) and "need" in the IPv6 world (number of subnets, tbe basic unit of which is a /64 which contains 18,446,744,073,709,500,000 bit combinations) it becomes incredibly clear just how fuzzy the definition is "need" is even in engineering terms. Plenty of room here for more or less liberal interpretations. you may find the answer to your question about DoD in that fuzzy space. 

Milton Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
------------------------------
Internet Governance Project:
http://internetgovernance.org

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