Geographic Addressing Reconsidered

Eric Hoffman and K Claffy
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis - CAIDA
San Diego Supercomputer Center,
University of California, San Diego

Humans have not inhabited Cyberspace long enough or in sufficient diversity to have developed a Social Contract which conforms to the strange new conditions of that world. Laws developed prior to consensus usually serve the already established few who can get them passed and not society as a whole.

The addressing model of the Internet constrains the shape of the routing system and charging model. There is only one concrete proposal, provider-based, currently under consideration for the management of the next generation IP address space (IPv6), despite concerns about its ramifications. In this paper we outline a counter proposal called Metro addressing and examine some of the technical and business issues that would result from its adoption.