8 Sep
2017
8 Sep
'17
2:41 p.m.
The similarities and differences I see:
The IP allocation like frequencies were granted to us, and we did not
pay for them. They are both regulated as they both are basically
finite resources.
However the present IP allocation unlike frequencies will at some
point in the future become worthless and unuseable to us.
If we were to consider trading a small piece of our network space;
-I am sure Marius' daemon could be modified to black hole the network
pieces we'd potential sell off, thus keeping the network secure to
hams only etc.
-There would be a heck of a lot of work for the ARDC a head of them
acting as stewards of the proceeds etc.
As for the potential proceeds;
-Lobbying. While I despise it in general, I do see our outdated rules
as the biggest/first hurdle.
-I'd say R&D sounds good. However TAPR does theoretically already
provide monetary support to people/groups with potential projects. I
don't really pay attention to the details of these actions so I don't
know how often someone with a good idea goes to TAPR requesting
monetary help though. Still boils down to willing and able R&D
people.
-Scholarships to engineering students. The youth is the future. (And
while I'd love as much as anyone else to see Phil Karn on this list, I
am glad he is still active at this most fundamental level- at least in
a non-monetary level)
-Attempt to obtain some IPv6 space. While I feel we'd likely be in
the same boat as now with it, not being able to route it, if we can
get some space at a decent price (one time fee etc), it might not be a
bad idea. But I have to say I think we can still do a lot without
IPv6 space.
So those are my thoughts
Steve, KB9MWR
Getting this community to agree on anything can be worse than pulling
teeth. ;) So, rather than talking about money or "selling" our valuable
resources, I think it would be helpful if we focused the discussion on what
resources we would consider valuable enough to trade a small piece of our
space for. In the end, we may decide that nothing is worth it, but I think
that this would be the best way to figure it out.
First of all, since we already have a global amateur radio registry for
IPv4 space, I think a large block of IPv6 space would be a worthwhile trade
for a small piece of 44/8. The current version of AMPRnet may not ever
support IPv6, but if it made any sense at all to get us a /8 in the early
80s to support the future of amateur radio innovation, then we should have
done the same for IPv6 well over a decade ago.
Personally, I've always wondered how we missed the boat on getting a
top-level domain name in the early days of DNS. Getting our own TLD makes
a lot of sense since our call signs are already a globally unique namespace
we could use with it. DNS is only meant to make addresses easier to
remember, but by standardizing our namespace in a TLD, we would also have
the advantage of a global directory that makes the services you want to
make public easily discoverable. I can see such a thing becoming very
valuable to our community in the future as amateur radio continues to merge
with the digital world. If we had setup a registry to handle it, that
technical advantage may have granted us a TLD in the early days. But now
that they've changed the rules for TLDs, it would almost certainly require
more resources than a group of hams could manage. However, if the concept
is valuable enough to us, it may be worth taking advantage of an
opportunity to trade a small part of our unused IPv4 space for it.
Cory Johnson, NQ1E
HamWAN Puget Sound