> Was this tongue in cheek?
Nope.
> I am not an economist, but this is a sure fire way to
destroy the internet
> as we know it today.
Why is this so hard to believe? Real estate is mostly a free
market, and
that seems to perform pretty well for the most part. How is
address space
that different? Please explain how you believe this would destroy the
internet.
There is a finite amount of IPv4 address space. If you recall the spectrum
auctions of years past, only the ultra-wealthy become owners of it.
The only good thing that would come of it, would be forcing everyone to
transition to IPv6.
Kris
There is a finite amount of IPv4 address space.
There's also a finite amount of real estate.
If you recall the spectrum auctions of years past, only the
ultra-wealthy become owners of it.
I don't believe spectrum auctions are really a good comparason. In order
for the PCS spectrum to be useful, the license would have to cover a very
large part of geography. With address space, there's no reason that a
variety of differently sized blocks couldn't be auctioned off which would
greatly increase the chances of different owners. Reguardless, even if
only utra-wealthy become owners, they would still have to compete against
each other to resell, rent, or whatever they want to do with it to
organizations that actually want to use the space.
Of course, there are already many organizations that own fairly large
chuncks of unused space. They would be able to freely sell it to whomever
they wish. Surely you'd agree that most of the organizations that own
/8's but are using only a tiny fraction of the space would sell it
quickly.
The only good thing that would come of it, would be forcing everyone to
transition to IPv6.
And if that's what the market demands then, great!
I'm wondering why nobody proposed a very simple solution for the conflict
beteen "economical" model of address allocation (i.e. address space
trading) and the need for hierarchical addressing: allow ownership of the
_amount_ of address space, but leave definition of exact addresses to the
exising allocation mechanisms through upstream ISPs.
This way if you show an ISP that you have a title for, say, /25 block,
they _have_ to allocate you addresses from their address space;
correspondingly, their upstream provider, or ARIN _have_ to increase their
allocation if they have shown that their customers posess titles to fill
their existing allocation.
Then, organizations (or their liquidators) can trade the address space
without breaking the route aggregation.
The obvious problem is what to do with poor countries.
--vadim