[discuss] IPv6 Deployment and IG

[Brian E Carpenter]

Milton,

On 28/12/2013 08:15, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>> All of which ignores the fact that IP addresses are
>> allocated, routed, and used topologically, not
>> geographically. Which means that all discussion of them in
>> terms of physical geography and national boundaries is
>> completely pointless.
> 
> From the standpoint of pure technical efficiency, perhaps so.

It isn't soe much a question of efficiency. If all Internet
connectivity in a given country is supplied by one or a few
national carriers, it would be perfectly possible for them all
to have blocks of address space taken from a single larger
block, but they would still need to be announced separately in
the global routing system, because that's how the global
rouring system works. So that the fact that they all come from
the same larger block is simply meaningless.

> But then you need to explain to me why we have a growing
> number of NIRs in Asia and Africa (including Japan) 

There's no harm in that, if a geographical area has a lively
Internet scene it makes sense to have a local registry,
operating in local languages and currency.

> and I why
> I spent several months this year trying to prevent the US DEA
> and DoJ from imposing jurisdictional boundaries on ARIN
> allocations on the basis of a "know your customer" rationale.

I would expect the DEA and DoJ to fall for the geographical
addressing delusion. That doesn't prevent it being a delusion.

> To me the explanation seems obvious; if a political authority
> can align allocation and assignment authority with their own
> jurisdiction then they have more power over Internet uses and
> users.

They might well believe that and it might be true, but it
absolutely does not require 'national' address space; it just
requires auditable address assignments.

   Brian