[cc list reduced] > The regional IRs cannot do this because they would face > determining who is a service provider and who is not as well as > enforcing minimum sizes for address allocations. This would > amount to nothing less than the registries regulating Internet > service provision. So far no practical policies for these > determinations have been suggested let alone met with community > consensus. > > There is a logical leap here that I'm just not following. Suppose > that some organization requests space from an IR. How does knowing > whether or not they are an ISP matter? I would submit that the IR > must allocate PA (i.e., "leased") address space to the organization > regardless of their business status. You cite out of context. The preceeding paragraph reads: Consequently it has been suggested that the regional IRs should immediately stop allocating and assigning PI space and only allocate PA space to service providers. Yes, exactly. But what is wrong with simply only allocating PA space? I still don't get this. RFC1518 can easily be interpreted this way too: > 6.1 Recommendations for an address allocation plan > > We anticipate that public interconnectivity between private > routing domains will be provided by a diverse set of TRDs, > including (but not necessarily limited to): > > - backbone networks (Alternet, ANSnet, CIX, EBone, PSI, > SprintLink); > > - a number of regional or national networks; and, > > - a number of commercial Public Data Networks. > > ... > > For the proposed address allocation scheme, this implies that > portions of IP address space should be assigned to each TRD > (explicitly including the backbones and regionals). For those leaf > routing domains which are connected to a single TRD, they should be > assigned a prefix value from the address space assigned to that TRD. Call them TRDs or large ISPs. I do not see any difference. In this scheme a regional IR will have to determine whether someone is a TRD, which gets their own chunk of PA space, or not. Criteria please! Simple: everyone gets a chunk of space out of their provider. What's so hard here? You know the (local) roots of the tree, correct? If you don't use the global roots and then truncate at your geographic boundary. Even if you assume that you know who the TRDs are, and thus can determine who is connected to a single TRD only, you are not there yet: There is a problem with organisations who re-assign address space. Typically ISPs do this. If some of them, let's call them resellers for convenience, were *forced by policy* to use PA space of *their* provider for this, it would solidly lock them into that provider. Same argument, same answer: they can renumber. I suspect that a provider can renumber MUCH more easily than any customer can. Any move of provider would cause the reseller to require all its customers to renumber. Correct. This just will not fly *as a result of general policy*. Well, turn off the net, 'cause nwe can't support it. That's simply address ownership by the ISP. No. Nyet. Rien. Nuts. Phooey. Any policy that requires this will be perceived as too restrictive to trade and competition and therefore not be implementable. Then renumbering customers is out the question too. Really, this is a unacceptable argument Daniel. You're saying that it's ok for customers to renumber, but if the provider has to renumber, that's a problem? How do you think the customers will feel about that? So how do we determine who gets a chunk of PA space *of their own* (note this is subtely different from PI space) and who gets locked into their transit ISP, TRD, ... . Who is providing _backbone_ connectivity? It is flawed, see above. Fine. The language is insufficiently recursive. I suspect you know that the intent was recursion. There are spelling errors in it too... ;-) Do not get me wrong: I fully understand the necessity for hierarchy. But there is a fundamental conflict here. Stronger hierarchy leads to: + easy routing + easy address allocation - strong regulation of ISPs - favours (currently) big ISPs - makes the Internet core oriented and more or less static - hinders competition - no incentive to solve difficult routing problems - leads to governmental regulation and control Weaker hierarchy leads to: - difficult routing - somewhat difficult address allocation + reglulation of ISPs not necessary + more dynamics and flexibility in topology + easier for new ISPs to establish themselves at any level + encourages competition + big incentive to solve difficult routing problems + no need for governmental regulation and control We have to find a workable compromise. It's called good "renumbering" technology. It solves all of these problems. Compromise means that each side has to give up something. I'm sure you're quite aware that the "easy routing" side has given just about everything that there is to give and then some. Tony