[discuss] we need to fix what may be broken

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 03:40:41PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote:
> Say that in a network infrastructure crowd and the room is likely to
> become uncomfortably silent. 

Well, so far we just don't understand the problem, but speaking as
someone who is in fact involved in network infrastructure I can say
that while I do worry about the growth of the routing table, it
doesn't yet keep me up at night.  Now, maybe I'm at the wrong part of
the network infrastructure, and that is your point.  I'm prepared to
accept that may well be true.

But in any case, I don't see how either ICANN or more Internet
governance can help with that.  I've been in plenty of rooms at ICANN
where I had to explain a deep technical problem, and the truth is that
the majority of people's eyes glaze when the technical details start
to matter.  This is not surprising: policy people don't want to know
the details, but the policy options.  In a world where the answer is,
"Whoops!" there really aren't any good answers.  The only thing we'd
get from adding ICANN to this kind of problem is more opinions as
well-informed on the topic as some of those we've seen here on this
list about the technical details behind the DNS.

> But, ok, none of ICANN et al's interest...if they say so.

That depends on who the "alii" are.  The technical communities have
two ways forward here: figure out how to accommodate a growing routing
table, or say to people, "The Internet is full."  No policy response
is going to be able to do anything to make that choice less stark, and
I think we know that option 2 is not allowed.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com