[NA-Discuss] address allocation, was Google Fiber

[John R. Levine]

> Naive, as I am, I am still a little unsure of how much the
> distribution of ip addresses is ICANN's business.

It is ICANN's business to the extent that ICANN runs IANA which handed out 
most of the original /8 allocations, and has a modest pool of returned 
space.

But IP space routing happens from the bottom up, unlike domain names which 
work from the top down.  If the RIRs decided they didn't like IANA's 
policies, they could ignore IANA, allocate space to their existing and new 
customers any way they want, and there wouldn't be anything ICANN could do 
about it.

So even if we were to dislike the RIRs' plans, I wouldn't waste our 
limited volunteer time on it.  As several of us said before, if this is 
something of importance to you, engage directly with your local RIR.

R's,
John