Re: Geographic v. topological address allocation

[Geoff Huston <gih () telstra net>]

Sean,

An interesting note, 

  but 

there is no such thing as common externalities today.

You  claim that externalities exist based on the observation that:
> In today's Internet the sender's provider keeps all the money. 

How so?

In Todays Internet there are various models where the
sender's provider keeps all the money, where the receiver's
provider keeps all the money, where both keep all the money
and where neither get any money!

> The
> sending provider wants the traffic off the sender's network as quickly
> as possible and onto the destination's provider network. 

Not necessarily - there are also reasons why a provider may elect
to do best exit rather than nearest exit.

What you are postulating is that in a uniform retail model various
engineering and financial interprovider arrangements become
logically common choices for all players, in so far as the common
choice offers the maximal benefit to all players, and then you
extrapolate this model into address allocation policies which
will optimally service that environment.

The weak point in all this is that without a uniform retail model
there is not much left where you can generalise about
what 'common benefit' may be and what addressing
structure will support it.

Not that I want to advocate uniform retail pricing structures -
my point is only that without such uniformity of retail structures
such 'follow the money' arguments as Sean presents here
quickly break down to a maze of twisty little passages.


Geoff