Geneva, March 15 and 16, 2010. The first meeting of the IPv6 group of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) turned into a protracted and tedious confrontation between one government – Syria – and the combined weight of all the incumbent Internet institutions, the European Telecom Numbering Organization, equipment vendors and the governments of North America and Europe (plus Australia). Defenders of the IP addressing status quo showed up in force, and insisted repeatedly that there was no problem with the current system that justified any major changes in the addressing and routing system. The issue of the problems confronting IPv6 migration was subordinated completely to fears of ITU encroachment on the turf of the native Internet institutions. This made it difficult to have a serious discussion of the real issues confronting the depletion of the IPv4 address space, the consequent pressures to move to a new internet standard, and alternative address allocation mechanisms. Further, strong backing for an alternate system failed to materialize among ITU participants, and the one supporter of deep ITU involvement, the Syrian representative, displayed a lack of technical expertise by trying to link IPv6 addressing to the International Internet Connectivity issue.
The meeting did however succeed in creating two “Correspondence Groups,” which will function more or less openly as ways to carry on what we can only hope will be a more constructive dialogue. Correspondence Group 2, in particular, is chartered to:
1.Identify concerns and issues with the current IP address management system, in particular those highlighted by developing countries
2. Study the extent of impact of the identified concerns/issues on the developing countries.
3. Seek and identify solutions within the current IP address management system
The IPv6 Group was convened by the Director of ITU’s Telecommunications Standards Bureau, with the support of its Development Bureau Director of BDT and the support of the ITU Council in 2009. The TSB was hoping to use a report by University of Malaysia’s Sures Ramadass advocating a competing, parallel system of IP addressing organized around Countries to get the ITU more involved in Internet governance. Ramadass, who has courageously taken on the entire internet technical community, has asked, “Why should the RIRs be a territorial monopoly? The study by Ramadass and UMS does not actually explore this idea in any depth, but in his promotion of diversity in address allocation institutions he often says this. This is an intruiging idea that needs to be explored further. Ramadass has also promoted the idea of a parallel system of address allocation, in which the ITU would get a /12 block and subdelegate pieces of this to country internet registries (CIRs), one for each nation-state. This system would accomplish two things, according to its advocates: first, it would reserve a block of ipv6 addresses for each country, which would assuage developing countries fears that the address space might be used up before they can get a chance to use it; second, it would also create some kind of competition over allocation policy with the RIR system. Ramadass contends that his proposal would allow more responsive local policies to be discussed among local stakeholders in local language. I have spoken to Sures directly about the threat that CIRs would lead to “nationalization” or governmental control of address allocation. He recognizes that this is a problem but believes that it can be avoided if the CIRs are headed by local Internet service providers. I am not convinced; I fear that once you align address allocation with jurisdictional boundaries you push the Internet too far back into an intergovernmental model and create political pressures and leverage required to control it at the national level. In many authoritarian countries the ISPs are all state-owned and/or heavily regulated, and there may only be one of them.
In hallway discussions with ARIN’s John Curran, we agreed that the elephant in the room – which neither side discussed – was the impending depletion of the IPv4 address space. This will inevitably lead to trading and pricing of v4 addresses and possibly concentration of resources. But in the turf war in Geneva, that subject did not come up.
The elephant in the room is out to lunch in Washington DC feasting in the new FCC walled garden.
>The issue of the problems confronting IPv6 migration was subordinated completely to fears of ITU encroachment on the turf of the native Internet institutions.
Actually, the issues of capacity building for IPv6 migration was the entire reason for the *first* correspondence group, so no doubt you intended “subordinated completely” as hyperbole…
The existing Internet organizations (including the RIR's) have been very active in working this very problem; you might want to reference several of their submissions to this study group outlined these efforts.
The only reason this topic didn't receive more discussion was not due to lack of interest or “fears of ITU encroachment” but the result of following terms of reference set by the ITU which focused on implementation details of a particular solution (CIR) before ever actually defining a problem statement, or even confirming existence of an actual problem…
/John
The TORONTO ARIN meeting should be interesting when the SEX.COM & ARIN CEO Shuffle Story is Published.
Careful. We may impose a limit on metaphor mixtures. 😉
@Milton where is your study :)?
expecting more competition with governments involved in that?never seen that and won't see it soon 🙂
about syrian rep, it is not surprising, it is common problem for developing countries to not send qualified experts (not because there is no experts)
Milton,
RFC 2050 suggests it, and ICP-2 codifies it.
http://www.icann.org/en/icp/icp-2.htm
The ITU CANNOT by my reading of this document satisfy the criteria for becoming a new RIR.
If Dr. Ramadass had actually done his research while doing his ITU commissioned study, he would have found this easily.
BTW, How much did the ITU pay you guys to do these “studies”?
RFC 2050 was written by Kim Hubbard, David Conrad and others when they were under fire for their corrupt activities.
At the time, Jon Postel was like a deer caught in the
headlights of a car. He issued dis-connected un-inforned
platitudes such as, “People can not be corrupt
because they are working for the community”.
Writing an RFC is a common way The Society
(The Community) justifies their bizarre actions.
It is like the KKK writing a document describing
how they need white hoods to protect their
identity, as IF it is they who need protection.
Brass it out is the mantra. The best defense has
always been a good offense. Write it and they will
believe it to be law.
Careful. The ARIN meeting should be interesting
ICANN is planning to close ARIN and RIRs.
See
http://IAB.org