Re: draft-savola-multi6-asn-pi-01.txt

[Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>]

On 23-feb-04, at 19:17, Christian Huitema wrote:

> What the RIR actually implement today is a negotiation between some
> customers who want the benefits of "portable addresses" and the 
> provider
> community that bears the costs associated with large routing tables.
> There is nothing particularly wrong with this kind of negotiation
> process.

There is one very big thing wrong with it: the negotiation happens in 
four (soon five) different places in the world, while the effect that 
is felt is the the results of these different negotiations. In other 
words: if AFRINIC adopts a policy that leads to deaggregation in 
Africa, routers around the world must keep these additional routing 
table entries in their tables.

> Routing table inflation has a cost, but the cost is not
> infinite; portable addresses have benefits, but the benefits are 
> finite.
> You would expect a negotiation process to stabilize at a point where
> benefits and costs are more or less matched, and you would expect this
> point to vary over time.

The trouble is that the tradeoff isn't universal, but the outcome needs 
to be in order to guarantee global connectivity. I worry about this.

> The bottom line is that our only real way to affect policy is by
> lowering the cost and increasing the benefits of multi-addressing.

Sounds like a plan.