[governance] PP: India wants to abolish BGP and introduce national routing and IP management

Mon Oct 27 00:22:08 EDT 2014

I agree that India's strategy in Proposal 98 is not well thought out.
However, I think India's concerns stem from the following:

1) IP addresses are not equitably distributed in the Asia Pacific region.
The skewed allocation is reflected in the statistics that Eastern Asia
holds 2,712,098 of the IPv4/24 addresses while South Asia (including India)
holds only 170,365 of the IPv4/24 addresses.

2) APNIC Executive Council (EC) has remained largely static and arguably
captured by the East Asians and Australians for almost a decade. In the
APNIC EC elections, the votes allotted to members are in proportion of the
IP addresses held by them. For example, if the IP holding is up to /22, the
member has 2 votes; and if the IP holding is between /13 and /10, then the
member has 32 votes.  Effectively, due to the current skewed allocation of
IP addresses, representatives of India do not stand much of a chance in
APNIC EC elections. Notably, India has had just one representative (for one
year) on the APNIC EC in the past decade. Additionally, while this system
of proportional voting creates a bias in favour of incumbent members who
have grandfathered large IP holdings, the system penalises those members
who are using IP addresses efficiently (for example by using Network
Address Translation) and also penalises the community that is yet to
connect to the Internet or has connected to the Internet late.

3) There are two options for redistribution of IP addresses. The first is
to go through the APNIC PDP, which is to reform APNIC from within. The
second is to bypass APNIC and ask ITU to take over the RIR function. India
seems to have adopted the second path due to lack of trust in the first
path, which would be slow, bottom-up, and subject to resistance by
incumbents. Further, APNIC EC plays a crucial role in the consensus
building process and I doubt any reform of the APNIC EC will not be
resisted.

4) With respect to the IANA transition, the APNIC secretariat drafted a
proposal and pushed that proposal top-down onto the community, which was
accepted as having consensus without any intelligent discussion in a
conference (APNIC38) at a remote location (please read transcripts of
APNIC38). This proposal suggests NTIA oversight should be replaced with a
SLA/AOC between ICANN and the NRO (combination of the 5 RIRs). An obvious
corollary of this extra added responsibility of oversight should be
enhanced accountability of the RIRs. Notably, APNIC is refusing to accept
any discussions on enhancing its accountability as part of the IANA
transition plan. Enhanced accountability of APNIC would include a measure
of representativeness in my opinion.

While I feel that India's concerns are genuine, I also feel the path
adopted is incorrect. If this proposal goes through as is, it can fragment
the Internet through three routes: First, through alternate (non-IETF)
standards emerging (from ITU) to address security concerns that are not
inter-operable with existing standards; Second, through a broken non-unique
allocation of IP addresses where ITU and RIRs allocate IP addresses in
parallel; Third, through an alternate root zone emerging to address the
names part of Proposal 98.

Additionally, some of India's concerns are driven by cyber security that
can be addressed domestically and do not require regional/international
reform. For example, domestic routing of traffic can be done by making the
IXPs more efficient. The comments received in the TRAI (India's telecom
regulator) consultations point towards numerous areas of improvement for
NIXI (India's IXP). Similarly, domestic hosting of content can be
facilitated by improving the privacy regime and intermediary liability
regime.

While I'm not saying India's strategy is right, I do believe that India
interfaces with broken regional/international institutions that need some
regional/international reform in addition to its domestic reforms.

Thanks,
Acharya

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro <
salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 10:58 AM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> * [MG>] this one seems to be causing a fair amount of controversy with
>> many of the Status Quo-ists going apoplectic… *
>>
>> instructs the Secretary General
>> 1 to collaborate with all stakeholders including International and
>> intergovernmental organizations, involved in IP addresses management to
>> develop an IP address plan from which IP addresses of different countries
>> are easily discernible and coordinate to ensure distribution of IP
>> addresses accordingly;
>>
> Sala: This is already being effectively administered and managed by the
> Regional Internet Registries and the system works effectively. What is the
> paper and rationale behind this exercise? It should be shared with the
> communities for critique?
>
>> 2 to collaborate with all the concerned stakeholders including
>> International and intergovernmental organizations to develop policies for
>> allocation, assignment and management of IP resources including naming,
>> numbering and addressing which is systematic, equitable, fair, just,
>> democratic and transparent and need to be adhered to by entities designated
>> with the responsibilities of allocating or assigning resources and dealing
>> with day-to-day technical and operational matters;
>>
> Sala: There are open Policy Development Processes that stakeholders are
> welcome to be involved in and debate. What specific aspect points the
> management of IP resources as not being  equitable, fair, just, democratic
> and transparent?
>
>> 3 to prepare reference plan for current and future telecom networks that
>> addresses concerns of Member States including safety, robustness,
>> resilience, routing in normal and exceptional cases and provide guidance on
>> technical capabilities to developing countries;
>>
> Sala: For countries who are now experiencing liberalisation, are we going
> back to Government led and run Telcos? There will be a fight expected from
> the Telcos without a doubt.
>
>> 4 to develop and recommend public telecom network architecture which
>> ensures effectively that address resolution for the traffic meant for the
>> country, traffic originating and terminating in the country/region takes
>> place within the country;
>>
> Sala: Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) should work just fine.
>
>> 5 to develop and recommend public telecom network architecture which
>> ensures that effectively the traffic meant for the country, traffic
>> originating and terminating in the country remains within the country;
>>
> Sala: Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) should work just fine.
>
>> 6 to develop and recommend a routing plan of traffic for optimizing the
>> network resources that could effectively ensure the traceability of
>> communication;
>> 7 to collaborate with all stakeholders involved in studying the
>> weaknesses of present protocols used in telecom networks and develop and
>> recommend secure, robust and tamper proof protocols to meet the
>> requirements of future networks in view of the envisaged manifold increase
>> in traffic and end devices in near future in the light of IoT and M2M
>> needs;
>> 8 to submit an annual report on above to the ITU council.
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________
>> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>>      governance at lists.igcaucus.org
>> To be removed from the list, visit:
>>      http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>>
>> For all other list information and functions, see:
>>      http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
>> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
>>      http://www.igcaucus.org/
>>
>> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>>
>>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>      governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> To be removed from the list, visit:
>      http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>
> For all other list information and functions, see:
>      http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
>      http://www.igcaucus.org/
>
> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20141027/2804c579/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t