[NA-Discuss] Google Fiber

Eric Brunner-Williams ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net
Sun Jan 27 22:07:25 UTC 2013


On 1/27/13 11:45 AM, Thomas Lowenhaupt wrote:
> Looking at this question from the narrow perspective of New York City,
> are you saying that IP4/6 address allocation to entities that might
> seek to compete with the existing bandwidth oligopoly is dependent on
> an address-freeing action from the ICANN? And thus the relevance to
> the NA-Discuss list, to answer Joly's question, is that if we're
> interested in improving bandwidth in New York, the list should
> bottom-up an enabling request to the ICANN board of directors?

Let us assume for the moment that address associated with prefixes
announced to the Default Free Zone (DFZ), and provisioned at link
level such that the associated bandwidth is greater than 56kB are
provided by a "market" dominated by a single ip/cdn (internet protocol
over cable data network) operator holding a municipal franchise
granting exclusive access to public rights of way (utility poles and
tunnels), and by a former Bell Operating Company offering ip/ss7
(internet protocol over Signalling System 7), which provides
"competitive local exchange" facilities to third-party ip/ss7
providers, and by one or two ip/vsat (internet protocol over Very
Small Aperture Terminal) providers.

I think this is a reasonable assumption for most of the major metro
areas in the NARALO region. There are a few exceptions, one is the
subject of the note which began this tread.

You've asked if re-allocation, presumably of IPv4 address resources,
is necessary, or at least a cost element, for reducing what we can
refer to as a bandwidth oligopoly. In theory, if the allocation regime
during the current exhaustion of IPv4 allocators (ARIN in the NARALO
region) is "market price", then any high capital venture, say putting
addresses on refrigerators or billboards, could price human eyeballs
(access network operators) out of the market.

So the answer to the oligopoly and transition question you've posed is
a very, very thin "yes", however that doesn't necessarily mean that an
advise-the-Board public interest issue exists, or exists as narrowly
as address block assignment.

The more general question is should the Board be advised that access
policy controlled by market price is contrary to the public interest.
There are "free market" advocates on the ARIN AC, and there is no
shortage of "free market" advocates for access to each of the unique
endpoint identifier resources for which the Corporation is the current
coordinator.  Clearly, I think the Board should be so advised, though
not from the hypothetical you've raised, but were I to offer my
thoughts on the public interest capabilities of a public metropolitan
network operator, as I did when writing one vendor's response to a
major metropolitan government's gTLD RFP, the interdependency of
naming and addressing policy would address and link address and link
provisioning and names policies (puns intended).

Eric




More information about the NA-Discuss mailing list