IETF 88 Part 2 - Guest Blog by Cathy Aronson

IETF 88 Part 2 - Guest Blog by Cathy Aronson [Archived]

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ARIN Advisory Council member, Cathy Aronson, is at IETF 88  in Vancouver, BC, Canada this week. Follow along as she shares hers findings with us on TeamARIN!

Guest blog post by Cathy Aronson

Cathy AronsonNovember 4, 2013

The first day of IETF is in full swing.   There is a lot of IPv6 activity today and I will write about that next. First, I feel that I need to emphasize something that happened this afternoon.  In my opinion it is of particular interest to the ARIN community.

This afternoon was the Internet Governance BoF.  The mailing list is internetgovtech@iab.org (subscribe by sending email to internetgovtech@iab.org).   The IETF,  like ARIN and the RIRs,  is starting to get involved actively in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and other Internet governance activities.  I think this is a good idea.  The thing that got me to the microphone in the session today is the fellow who stood up and said that part of the solution to the problem is to give countries large blocks of IP addresses.  Someone stood up at a past IETF and asserted the same thing.  The theory is that there is so much address space in IPv6 that it’s basically infinite (which of course it isn’t) and that we should just make every government happy and just give each a huge block.

I went to the microphone to explain that there is a global bottom up process for handing out IP addresses and each region sets that region’s policies.  I suggested that the IETF folks become familiar with that and not suggest that blocks be given to governments.  I am particularly passionate about this because if the IETF asserts that the RIRs don’t work or that they should be bypassed that is not good for the Internet routing system (at least in my opinion).    Even worse in this case it is as if some folks in the IETF have no idea that the RIR system exists.

In addition assigning address blocks geographically, although an interesting intellectual exercise, is not technically feasible.  The aggregation is done on Internet Service Provider (ISP) boundaries not on geographic boundaries.  Sure,  occasionally this mimics the geography but more often it doesn’t match the geography.

In my opinion it’s discouraging that folks at the IETF are asserting that a fix to Internet governance is breaking routing and aggregation.   I encourage folks who are interested to join the mailing list and participate in guiding the IETF’s role in Internet governance.

-Cathy

Any views, positions, statements or opinions of a guest blog post are those of the author alone and do not represent those of ARIN. ARIN does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or validity of any claims or statements, nor shall ARIN be liable for any representations, omissions or errors contained in a guest blog post.

Any views, positions, statements or opinions of a guest blog post are those of the author alone and do not represent those of ARIN. ARIN does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or validity of any claims or statements, nor shall ARIN be liable for any representations, omissions or errors contained in a guest blog post.

OUT OF DATE?

Here in the Vault, information is published in its final form and then not changed or updated. As a result, some content, specifically links to other pages and other references, may be out-of-date or no longer available.