Re: For whom is IPv6? [was: Happy St Nicholas Day: Re-Launching the IPv6 ULA registry]

[David Farmer <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 14:07 Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> On 15-Dec-20 02:28, Nico Schottelius wrote:
> >
> > Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> writes:
> >
> >> On 14-Dec-20 16:57, Fred Baker wrote:
> >>> What is your budget, personally, for IANA services? Yes, there needs
> to be money, but my understanding is as a permanent ULA registry would be
> nothing more than “a registry”, of which they operate hundreds.
> >>
> >> Yes, if a suitably rich organization would agree to take this on as a
> permanent
> >> & free service. That is something that would need a policy decision,
> not just
> >> a technical decision, which is why I called it a challenge, not a
> problem.
> >
> > Out of curiosity: how are policy decisions taken and what is the process
> > for initiating one?
>
> IMHO that is a non-trivial question, compared to how technical decisions
> are taken (which is basically defined by RFC2026). But for this case, if
> we are talking about ULA space (which is what RFC2860 calls a "specialised
> address block") the answer seems to be that the IESG can give instructions
> to IANA. That is quite different from regular IP address space, where
> policy is set by ICANN under RFC2860. However, unless ICANN itself was
> willing to provide a free registry for ULA-C, I suppose the IETF/IESG
> would have to find someone willing to do so and negotiate an agreement.


Let be clear registry services have never been performed for free, for a
long time they weren’t paid for by the users of the registry entries and
were paid for by the US Government. We have evolved away from that, for
good and bad, and finally cut the vestigial ties to the US Government not
that long ago. I think my preferred solution to this is, have the RIRs
operate the ULA-C registry, they already have the technical and customer
service staff necessary. Then provide heave discounts or sponsorships for
Community Networks provided by the RIRs themselves, ICANN, ISOC, or some
combination of those entities. Also, recognize it may not be legal for what
most of us think of as Community Networks to even operate in some
jurisdictions, probably even some of the jurisdictions that most need them.
This could make it challenging to find the proper definition for what a
Community Network really is and what makes it deserving of the discounts or
sponsorship that is proposed. I think figuring the funding for Community
Networks to get free or virtually free resources is a challenge worthy of
the collaboration of the I*organizations and I think they all should have a
role in making it happen.

Thanks