At the very least, it's an open question whether it is possible to build an Internet without central registries. Until we prove otherwise -- and I would certainly support research and experiments to devise an alternative -- central registries will remain essential, and no amount of wishful thinking will eliminate the need for a *political* solution to the management question.
The IETF is in the business of technical solutions, but that doesn't mean that there *is* a technical solution to every problem. Where there isn't (or might not be) it is our duty to make the public and politicians aware of the political issues and the technical tradeoffs. (The fact that such political discussions tend to be messy and unsatisfying doesn't make the duty any less real.) We should be careful not to dodge this responsibility by pretending that we're sure we can come up with an alternative when there isn't one on the horizon.
In short, I think it would be a mistake to declare a "moratorium on the creation of IANA registries" without at least a plausible theory about what kind of alternatives might be possible. -- Nathaniel
On Jul 19, 2004, at 1:00 PM, Christian Huitema wrote:
Paul, this IPv9 hoopla strikes me as another research project harping
the nationalistic chord in order to get funding. This is not exactly
news. It was a common undertone in many European research proposals in
the 1980's and 1990's, and it is also a classic line in NSF or DARPA
proposals. The officials in the Chinese government may fall for that
line a few times, but I believe that they are smart and will eventually
allocate their grants based on technical merit rather than non-technical
arguments.
There is however an interesting technical point behind all these
discussions of number allocations. The general Internet architecture is
largely decentralized, but we have accepted to rely on a few centralized
functions. The obvious ones are DNS names and IP addresses, but there
are many others, such as port numbers and generally the various
registries held by IANA.
Centralized registries are expedient, and are not a big concern when the
network is small, or when the central authority is virtuous. However,
the network is big and the central authority becomes a locus of power.
The history text books teach us that loci of power attract politicians
and politician-friendly profiteers, and the Internet does not appear to
be an exception.
It seems that we, the IETF community, have been complacent to centralization and have dug ourselves in a centralization hole. We may hope to get out of it by ensuring that ICANN remains in charge and remains virtuous, but that goes very much against all historic precedents.
When in a hole, one should obviously first stop digging: that would mean
a moratorium on the creation of IANA registries. One should also think
hard about technical alternatives to central registries. In some case,
that may mean a slightly larger field in a protocol format, so a large
random number can be used instead of a short registered number. In other
cases, like name resolution, that may require a technical break-through.
But we should definitely think about it!
-- Christian Huitema
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