What is going on in Australia?

[Benedikt Stockebrand]

Hi George and list,

"George Bonser" <gbonser at seven.com> writes:

>> I will tell you what could very well happen:
>> 
>> The return of 1980's "walled gardens" where a provider uses the entire
>> 32-bit v4 space and continues operating using v4.  Want to provide
>> service to a user in that "garden"?  Fine, you will need to get an
>> allocation from their v4 space and probably tunnel that over v6 to
> your
>> operation.

The effect would be that some services won't be able because their
providers won't bother the extra hassle at their expense; this would
simply drive customers away from an ISP that only offers such a
crippled service range

I wouldn't be surprised if some ISPs tried the same mistake they did
in the 1990's, where AOL, MSN, CompuServe and various national
telephony carriers still thought that people would be willing to be
locked up in such a "walled garden" environment.  It didn't work then,
and I don't see much of a chance for them to go back that way now that
people have learned that unrestricted connectivity is feasible.

> And this will most likely happen in the context of countries, not ISPs.
>
> Some country will decide to use the entire v4 address space.  If you
> want to provide service to that country's population you get an
> allocation from "that country's" IP space.  If for some reason that
> country decides they don't like you anymore, they simply black hole your
> allocated address space.  In fact, all foreigners could be placed in a
> block where it can be "black-holed" very easily.

This reasoning may work for a very few large countries, but even to
them at a rather hefty price.  Most would cripple their international
business so badly that this is economically infeasible, at least in
places like Europe (possibly minus Russia), Africa, south-eastern Asia
and at least significant parts of Latin America.

These mechanisms have been known since around 1650; check out Adam
Smith's "Wealth of Nations" if you are so inclined.  While his
reasoning lacks a number of important aspects e.g. about monopolies
and cartels, the very basic reasoning still applies in this case.


Cheers,

    Benedikt

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Benedikt Stockebrand, Dipl.-Inform.   http://www.benedikt-stockebrand.de/