Financial Incentives for Route Aggregation and Efficient Address Utilization in the Internet
Rekhter, Yakov, Resnick, Paul and Bellovin, Steve, "Financial
Incentives for Route Aggregation and Efficient Address Utilization in
the Internet," Proceedings of Telecommunications Policy Research
Conference, Solomons, MD.
Revised version to be reprinted in "Coordination of the Internet",
Brian Kahin and James Keller, eds. MIT Press.
Abstract
Growth of the Internet is limited both by the
ability of the Internet routing system to scale, and by the
availability of IP addresses that are unique within the Internet.
Unfortunately, scaleable routing and efficient address space
utilization sometimes require painful renumbering of existing hosts
to new addresses or otherwise undesirable address allocations.
Financial incentives, in addition to the existing methods of
persuasion and coercion, can motivate IP address assignment that is
efficient both with respect to its suitability for aggregation (via
hierarchical routing), and with respect to address space utilization.
Where trade-off must be made between conflicting goals, financial
incentives will permit local decisions that take into account local
differences, thus leading to better choices than could be made by any
centralized administrative body. This paper presents a framework for
property rights and contracts so that prices can arise through
natural market forces, without the need for a global authority or tax
collector.