When talking about arrangements with major network providers, since I come from an academic environment and often use amateur resources for academic experiments,  I am thinking of the global research and higher education networks, like Internet2 in the US, RedClara in Latin America, GÉANT in Europe, TEIN and others in Asia etc.
I think it is worth trying making the case for them to route subnets out of 44/8. I am prepared to take a discussion over here about the possibility to route the Nordic country subnets via Nordunet/GÉANT and some African subnets via the corresponding regional networks in Africa. I am working with African partners on environment data collection for research for example.

The enforcement could perhaps also be delegated to trusted regional/national organisations. Since we have a change in coordination of the Swedish subnet 44.140/16, I am discussing with the Swedish national Radioamateur organisation, which has a delegation from the Swedish telecom regulator to issue radio amateur licences (www.ssa.se), to be the supervisor of the use here in Sweden, re-delegating the work involved with time-limited agreements with interested local clubs and dedicated individuals.

Bjorn

On 2012-03-15 08:11, Dan Jameyson wrote:

Oh yes, agree.

 

It's worth keeping for ham licensed use. As far as "non-profit" dynamics, I'm more thinking if arrangements would ever need to be made with a major network provider. That actually speaks to the multi-homing concept. By way of background, I'm getting into the old-school "mainframe" theory of virtualization, and one elegance I have come to appreciate, is how easy it is to separate network traffic. Large IT departments use it to maintain security and vendor license policies; that same technique can be used to segregate "licensed" RF-derived traffic from "unlicensed" traffic. It's a great tool, but like everything else in our precious microcosm, it all comes down to the honesty of the ham operators.

 

Regarding the delegations (which you mentioned in a note after this one), I like the idea -- but, enforcement of such IT policies necessitates monitoring infrastructure (and its back-cataloging and databasing), bandwidth to service that monitoring, and people to run and maintain infrastructure, etc. That's a big cost-sink for what should be trusted to operators maintain best engineering practices. IMHO, I'm thinking that as an ideal, every IP should be routable via a licensed RF interface -- something on our own HF/VHF/UHF/microwave band plan. But, that's a purist ideal to strive for, not necessarily a practicality.

On the other note (regarding the radio links), I've recently become very interested in the legacy commercial microwave networks -- they were everywhere 20 years ago, but around here (East San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA) they have been phased out in favor of fiber-optic technology. The microwave technology is still very powerful, and has advantages in portability versus land-lines. That's an expensive prospect for an individual... but it's still out there, within our band plan, and could be very useful as a back-up to "Mother Bell" and an alternate way to integrate public safety infrastructure (i.e., multiple police, fire, and medical systems). I really like the idea of pushing to put up and improve real RF links -- that just made my day, right there!

 

DS Jameyson

W4DSJ