Subject: RE: UN

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:36:33 -0700

> Behalf Of Brian E Carpenter
 
> Although what WSIS may or may not decide is undoubtedly of 
> interest to the Internet community, I really think it is a 
> distraction here and now until there are concrete questions 
> for us to discuss. Our community's route to the WSIS 
> discussions is through the ISOC - where basic membership is 
> free, by the way.

The time to have discussions is before the concrete proposals are put on
the table. Once there is a plan on the table it is usually too late.

The Internet has affected the entire global economy. It should not be a
surprise then that control of the Internet is a global political issue.

There are three viable defense strategies. One is to be strong enough to
defeat any enemy that might threaten you, the second is to make an
alliance to achieve that end, the third is to establish a situation
where occupation is simply not worthwhile. At the moment the IETF
appears to be relying entirely on the second option. That relies on the
powerful ally being willing and able to continue support indefinitely.
It would be better to consider making use of the third strategy in
addition.

Defense is important but it should be the last resort of diplomacy. The
actual issues most of the countries that are raising the governance
issue are concerned about are of equal concern to the IETF community, at
least in the abstract. Nobody in the IETF is opposed to global Internet
access.

One way to preserve the current institutions in place would be to set
out a set of basic principles that would be considered binding. For
example every country has an absolute right to connect to the Internet. 

One important consequence of this would be that DNS root zone
allocations must not be withheld as a means of imposing a sanction. This
is a serious concern to certain countries even though attempting to do
so would be improbable.

The other more practical consequence is consideration of what will
happen when the IPv4 address space is finally exhausted. I suggest
people read Jarred Diamond's Collapse for ideas on what might happen
when the last IPv4 address block is cut. I suspect it would be similar
to what happened on Easter Island when the tribes that had cut down all
their own large trees found they needed wood. It is likely to be ugly,
and hypothesizing an instantaneous migration to IPv6 does not make the
problem go away. A statement to the effect that the US will be in the
same boat as everyone else when IPv4 space runs out would go a long way
to alleviate concerns here. 

And yes I know that people have been predicting the end of IPv4 address
space for years. I bet people who were worried about deforrestation on
Easter Island were also told 'people have been predicting that we will
run out of trees some day and they have always been wrong in the past'.
We are bound to run out of IPv4 addresses sooner or later.

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