[address-policy-wg] RE: Question

["Tony Hain" alh-ietf@localhost]

A public answer to a private question as I have been sitting on a beach for
awhile without the laptop and missed some related conversations ... :)

> Is the outcome really open for discussion on the PI issue?  It doesn't
> sound like it is.

In the minds of some the route scaling issue outweighs any argument for PI.
When taken to its extreme, there is a valid point that a broken routing
system serves no one. At the same time the dogmatic stance by the ISPs
enforcing lock-in is just as broken both for large organizations with
financial or legal requirements for operational stability, and the
individual consumer/small business with limited budgets looking for true
competition. The hard part is finding the middle ground in a way that limits
the exposure to a potential routing collapse. 

I personally refuse to declare some needs legitimate and others not, as the
only point of such differentiation is to establish a power broker. When all
uses are legitimate, the problem boils down to the technical approach that
can be scaled as necessary to contain growth in the routing system. This is
the logic that leads me to the bit-interleaved geo that can be aggregated in
varying size pockets as necessary using existing BGP deployments. We can
start flat and implement aggregation over time when a region becomes too
large to handle. One nice side effect of this geo approach is that it
mitigates the continuing political demands for sovereign rights to IPv6
space.

Any aggregation approach will force the business models to change from
current practice. That is not as bad a thing as the alarmists will make it
out to be, because their accountants are claiming the current model is a
broken money looser as it is (which if so means they will eventually change
anyway). The primary difference is that there will need to be aggregation
intermediaries between the last-mile and transit providers. The current
model eliminates these middle-men by trading off their routing mitigation
service against a larger routing table (actually they already exist in the
right places but are currently limited to layer2 media aggregators). The
anti-PI bunch is trying to use social engineering to directly counter the
bottom line business reality that the customer will always win in the end.
Rather than accept this situation and constructively work on the necessary
business model and technology developments, they effectively stall progress
by staunchly claiming there is no acceptable technical approach that works
within the current business structure. 

Making the RIRs be the police deciding who qualifies for PI and who does not
just adds to their workload and raises costs. The beneficiaries of this
gatekeeper approach are the ISPs that claim they need full routing knowledge
everywhere, while the cost burden for supporting the waste-of-time
qualification/evaluation work is borne by the applicant. Given that the most
vocal and organized membership in the RIR community are the ISPs it is easy
to understand why it would seem like the PI issue is already decided as
closed. I tend to believe it will just drag out until enough of the
corporate world becomes aware of the IPv4 exhaustion in light of their
growth needs that they collectively appear at their RIR and demand an
immediate solution. Unfortunately this 'wait till the last minute' tactic
will likely result in a reactionary quickie with its own set of long term
side effects. 

A while back I tried to hold a BOF on geo PI in the IETF, but was told that
shim6 was the anointed solution. Now that at least nanog has told the IAB
where to put shim6 it might be possible to get the current IESG to
reconsider. In any case the result would be a technical approach that would
still require RIRs to establish policies around. As long as they are
dominated by the ISPs it will be difficult to get real PI.

Tony