Hi David, I mostly agree with you, but... David Kessens wrote:
IP (both versions) address space is a global resource. It would be unfair for people operating in different regions if they would get addresses based on different rulesets, or worse are unable to get addresses in one region while they would be eligible in another. In addition, multinational companies are able to do address shopping in different regions (where it is easiest/cheapest), while local companies have to deal with the local monopoly that has more difficult rules than another region or has temporary service issues.
I very much agree with you on that. This should not happen, BUT I believe we cannot assume the same rules apply in all regions in this world.
[On a side note: The boundaries of the regions are completely artificial and irrelevant in a network that knows no borders. Why is it that we have to get our resources from areas on the globe that are rather expensive in an age when many companies are starting to move service industry jobs to places where it is more cost effective ?]
The network ist a technical transport layer, but if the network assists to bypass rules and laws - which definitively differ massively country by country - the network as a global thing will have ha hard time - no matter how many addresses it will be able to carry! We have to consider regional issues into the networking architecture, that user and content tracking must be integrateable as well as other features such as roaming and multihoming. Of course I do like freedom and free speech, but the same as customs on borders have their right of existance, taxes are essential and crime is a problem. If we don't integrate "APIs" for legal entities into the design, more and more blocks will be erected to filter traffic or scan contents in a very uneffective way, which also kills the BIG_Address-Advantage all at once. Is the phone system currently good or bad? It scaled pretty well with the country-code numbering plan and a more or less open end-device addressing scheme. OK, routing is complicated nowadays as well, but this system surely proofs, that localized concepts can be successful too. And multihoming phones is news to me anyway. If the cell breaks down, my cell-phone is dead. I do believe IP-whatever-Version will become no (even higher) success, if the design does not focus more on the application that on the network end-to-end connectivity "advantage". Actually 90% of all companies that demand multihoming, just need a redundancy for their application to stay up and not ONE addressblock that is connected by multiple providers. The whole problem starts when tying applications too close to the network. Regards, Kurt -- + Kurt Kayser - Geschäftsführer Netzwerke - teamix GmbH + * Südwestpark 35, 90449 Nürnberg, Germany (Old Europe) * # Tel: +49 911 30 999 0, Mobil: +49 160 5810284 #