[AusNOG] [pacnog] RIPE NCC Position On The ITU IPv6 Group

[Chris Chaundy]

Hi David,

Speaking strictly for myself here. I was going to send a reply that
echoes several points discussed by Steve and Danny below but held
back.  It does appear that the ITU proposal has the potential for
deliberate or coincidental nationalisation of the Internet by stealth.

To quote Kurt Cobain, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they
aren't after you"...

Regards, Chris

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 6:16 PM, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
> Hi Fred,
>
> On Feb 26, 2010, at 11:51 PM, pita at connect.com.fj wrote:
>> Keep the minds open as there are some real valid and serious issues here.
>
> I tend to agree.
>
>> I would really like to hear good strong arguments for both sides
>
> The ITU efforts are being discussed a bit on NANOG right.  Danny McPherson raises some interesting issues in response to a note by Steve Bellovin (attached).
>
> Regards,
> -drc
>
>> From: Danny McPherson <danny at tcb.net>
>> Date: February 26, 2010 6:38:01 PM PST
>> To: "nanog at nanog.org list" <nanog at nanog.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Fwd: [members-discuss] [ncc-announce] RIPE NCC Position On The ITU IPv6 Group]
>>
>>
>> On Feb 26, 2010, at 4:41 PM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I think that "PTT" is the operative token here, but for reasons having
>>> nothing to do with competition.  If all they wanted was competition,
>>> the easy answer would be to set up more registries -- or registrars
>>> -- not bounded by geography; as long as the number wasn't too large, it
>>> wouldn't do too much violence to the size of the routing tables.
>>>
>>> If a PTT-like body is *the* registry for a country, and if the country
>>> chose to require local ISPs and business to obtain address space from
>>> it, what's the natural prefix announcement to the world?  Right -- that
>>> country's registry prefix, which means that all traffic to that country
>>> just naturally flows through the PTT's routers and DPI boxes.  And it
>>> benefits everyone, right?  It really cuts down on the number of prefixes
>>> we have to worry about....
>>
>> Until routing domains (i.e., ASNs) are carved up to become congruent
>> to national boundaries for national security, censorship or other
>> reasons.  When this happens, not only will those IPv6 prefixes become
>> fragmented, so to will their legacy IPv4 space, and certainly to the
>> detriment of routing scalability, security, and stability.
>>
>> Then add something like RPKI to the mix and you've got a very effective
>> hammer to enforce national policy - all network operators will use
>> the national RPKI trust anchor, and all of your address space will be
>> allocated (and certified) strictly from this national Internet registry
>> - so that they can surgically control precisely who can reach you, and who
>> you can reach - within the whole of the global routing system, and
>> DPI, tariffing, etc.. are all much akin to models of yester that they
>> can wrap their heads around.
>>
>> And all the efforts and bottom-up policy driven by the RIRs in the
>> current model will dry up, as will the RIR revenue sources, and their
>> much wider contributions to the Internet community.
>>
>> If you think the RIRs and the current model sucks, well, consider
>> the alternatives.  For that matter, so to better the RIRs and their
>> constituents.
>>
>>> It's funny -- just yesterday, I was telling my class that the
>>> Internet's connectivity was not like the pre-deregulation telco model.
>>> The latter had O(1) telco/country, with highly regulated
>>> interconnections to anywhere else.  The Internet grew up under the
>>> radar, partly because of the deregulatory climate and partly because
>>> especially in the early days, it wasn't facilities-based -- if you
>>> wanted an international link to a peer or a branch office, you just
>>> leased the circuit.  The result was much richer connectivity than in
>>> the telco world, and -- in some sense -- less "order".  Syria wants to
>>> roll the clock back.
>>
>> I can't believe that the current model of more dense interconnection,
>> continued disintermediation, and a far more robust IP fabric would
>> evolve to be more resilient and robust from national Internet registry
>> allocation models or the Internet routing system rearchitecting that's
>> sure to follow.
>>
>> Of course, if the ITU-T is serious about this, they should probably be
>> asking for a good chunk of 32-bit ASNs as well, but that's a bit more
>> difficult to do under the auspices of liberating IPv6.
>>
>> -danny
>>
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