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

[Geoff Huston]

On 27/02/2010, at 6:51 PM, pita at connect.com.fj wrote:

> Some folks just likeshooting down other organisations and missinmg the issues
> 
> Can the contribution be more on the issues otherwise take it elsewhere
> 
> Keep the minds open as there are some real valid and serious issues here. 
> 
> So to start with,you can contribute on the issues raised or why the study is needed?
> 
> One of the commonly supported ideals is having competition. 
> 
> Is this an issue if organised well?
> 
> How about security.. Can we all live it to system?
> 
> I would really like to hear good strong arguments for both sides
> 


Hi Fred,

In response to your request for some contributions to the topics of competition in address distribution, Paul Wilson and I wrote the following some years back: http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2005-04/compete.html

I believe that you will find that this article directly addresses the issues relating to the potential effects of competing address distribution systems within the same protocol set. I note that nothing has changed in the intervening period.

At the time I also wrote a broader look at the motivations of the ITU in this space, and you can find that at: http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2004-11/2004-11-isp.htm 

The ITU evolved over the 20th century to match the needs and desires of its constituents and as many, if not all, national regimes addressed the social needs for broad access to a single functional telephone network via national monopolies , the ITU assumed, in effect, the role of being the monopolists club. Since many of these monopolies were publically owned and operated enterprises the role of governments and the role of the monopoly actors were closely aligned. There were some chinks in this approach, chiefly relating to the use of inter-provider (all, to call it by its real name at the time "inter-government") payments for the increasingly lucrative area of international communications, and the opposition was mainly from the US, but on the whole the ITU was tolerated given the lack of any viable alternative. 

The Internet was not an isolated technological innovation - it rode upon the back of progressive deregulation of the telecommunications sector in the late 20th century. The Internet players have been firmly rooted in a vibrantly competitive and largely deregulated private sector, and the ITU has been supremely irrelevant to their business models. But the ITU still has a set of folk who feel that their interests are best articulated by this august body, even if their individual interests are possibly as simple as preserving their rather comfortable lifestyle in Geneva while living on permanent travel allowance! I must admit, however, that I find it ironic that the latest efforts by the ITU to regain some degree of relevance in this shifted world order of the largely deregulated competitive telecommunications environment that we live in today, have the ITU invoking the mantra of "competition!" From the supreme head of the former monopolist club that indeed is an ironic, and economically and politically speaking a naive and inept move on the part of the ITU, in my view.

So I agree with you Fred in the assertion that these are indeed significant issues - to quote from the closing para of the second document I've referenced:

"It is unlikely that James Watt would've looked at the governor he had invented for the steam engine and foreseen the fundamental way that the ensuing industrial revolution would change the lives of every human on the planet over the ensuing centuries. His was a simple problem of technology.

At its outset the Internet was also a simple problem of technology. Today it is no longer just a question of technology, but also a more fundamental question of entering a process of social change, as we embrace a world of information, where the economic forces appear to be related to the capability of acquiring and exploiting information."

   Regards,

      Geoff Huston

      Usual Disclaimers - these are all my views.