As IPv4 address space dwindles, there is a debate as to whether an exchange for trading unused address blocks should be created, and ars technical has asked two of its contributors, Iljitsch van Beijnum and Timothy Lee, to argue the case for and against. Timothy Lee argues an exchange for trading IPv4 address blocks is the way to go, saying “there are still a lot of unused and underused IP addresses in the hands of various private organizations. All that is needed is an incentive for them to part with their unused addresses voluntarily. In other words, what’s needed is a market in IP addresses.” Lee says large companies with unused address blocks are unlikely to relinquish them, so an incentive needs to be created. But Lee notes, “the American Registry for Internet Numbers … has resisted the emergence of a market for IP addresses — at least one it doesn’t control. The organization insists that IP addresses are not property and that address blocks can only be transferred with its approval.” On the fairness of a market for IPv4 addresses, Lee notes “critics of selling IP addresses on the open market worry about the egalitarian implications of asking relatively poor countries like India to pay millions of dollars to rich countries like the United States for additional IP addresses. But this objection gets the issue precisely backwards.” He then says “so the alternative to Indian ISPs paying Westerners for IP addresses isn’t that they get them for free. It’s that they don’t get them at all. No one is arguing that Indian ISPs should be forced to buy IPv4 addresses. If they can go straight to IPv6, more power to them. But it would be paternalistic to try to block Indians from buying IPv4 addresses if they think that’s in their interest.” Arguing the no case, Iljitsch van Beijnum states that “US holds about four IPv4 addresses per capita, and most of Western Europe has one or two. But many other parts of the world have much less than that. China has been using up IPv4 address space like it was going out of style, going from having about 8 million addresses around the turn of the millennium to 330 million now. India, on the other hand, has almost as many people but only 35 million IPv4 addresses. Should the poorest countries in the world be forced to buy IP addresses from the West, providing a windfall to some of the richest American companies just because those participated in an e-landgrab at the right moment?” Buying up IPv4 addresses in a market will see companies like large ISPs with highly fragmented small blocks of addresses and that “just dealing with so many different contracts will be a nightmare.” So van Beijnum says his “prediction is that at the ISP level, a functioning market won’t form at all, or will break down very quickly after it forms. All the while, address trading will take away resources, monetary and otherwise, from implementing the long-term solution: IPv6. With no new supply of IPv4 addresses and an increasing number of potential address users (we’ve been using up 200 million new IPv4 addresses per year recently), an address market will be prone to bubbles. Bubbles can also easily burst as service providers move to address-conserving technologies such as NAT and IPv6. Of course the US government can always bail out service providers using the nearly 200 million legacy IPv4 addresses that it has on its books.” “If address trading happens in non-trivial volumes, the address space will also fragment as organizations sell off only part of their address space. Due to the power-of-two limitation, doing this easily adds a handful of entries to the routing tables of routers throughout the world. The IPv4 Internet will become less reliable as older routers operate at peak capacity and routing protocols are stressed. Unless the RIRs throw all their policies out the window and rubber-stamp all address transfers, it will become harder to trace back an address to its user, giving free reign to spammers and other shady outfits.” Both of these articles are available in full on the ars technica website. The article by Iljitsch van Beijnum is available at arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/trading-ipv4-addresses-will-end-in-tears.ars while Timothy Lee’s article is available at arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/the-case-for-a-free-market-in-ipv4-addresses.ars .

Vietnamese internet users in rural areas have taken to the Vietnamese language internationalised domain name, making up a large proportion of the 320,000 Vietnamese language domains that have been registered since 28 April. “Internet users in rural areas were especially fond of using Vietnamese-language domain names since they used Vietnamese almost exclusively on the internet. The meaning of Vietnamese domain names was also clearer and more understandable to Vietnamese users,” said Tran Minh Tan, deputy director of the VNNIC, part of the Ministry of Information and Communications. “The Vietnamese IDNs represent a concerted effort on the part of VNNIC and Dot VN to reach the whole of the Vietnamese population and not just those that reside in major cities. While many online services have focused almost exclusively on urban users in major cities, those users represent but a small fraction of the over 89 million people that make up the population of Vietnam.” said Dot VN President Lee Johnson. “We hope to be a leader in the development of services for the as yet underserved majority of existing and potential internet users. The Vietnamese IDN resonates with the whole of Vietnamese Society in a fundamental way and engages Vietnamese users in their native speech in a way that is far superior to standard Vietnamese domain names. We believe that it is this connection that will allow us to reach countless millions of new Vietnamese users with a depth and scope not yet achieved through the power of their native language. As VNNIC’s partner in the IDN project we will continue to dedicate ourselves to reaching all corners of Vietnam from the cities to the fields with the very best products and services.” Up until early this year, there were strict limitations on the allocation of .VN domain names. But on 10 January the regulations changed. To assist on their uptake, .VN domains are allocated to Vietnamese and foreign organisations and individuals on a first-come, first-served basis according to VNS report. The allocation of free .VN domains commenced on 28 April. To register your .VN domain name, check out Europe Registry here , although more information on .VN domains is available from dotVN here .

One must wonder what America’s Association of National Advertisers has been doing for the last five years or so. As ICANN has been consulting about the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains, they have seemingly said nothing. Not a peep. Well, not until July this year anyway. And then it becomes a flood. And now a letter to ICANN’s CEO and President Rod Beckstrom where the ANA criticises ICANN for its lack of a bottom-up input process involving the global Internet community, insufficient research and guidance from expert authorities, inadequate oversight by the U.S. Department of Commerce and potentially disastrous consequences if the program is implemented in January 2012, as planned. While ICANN’s process has not been without criticism, it’s difficult to take seriously the ANA’s comments. I mean, what were all those ICANN meetings, the long drawn out process that has gone close to pushing to the limit some of the early parties interested in new gTLDs. The ANA argues that implementation of the ICANN program is economically unsupportable and is likely to cause irreparable harm and damage to its membership and the Internet business community in general. At the same time, according to the ANA, the program contravenes the legal rights of brand owners and jeopardises the safety of consumers. “By introducing confusion into the marketplace and increasing the likelihood of cybersquatting and other malicious conduct, the ICANN top-level domain program diminishes the power of trademarks to serve as strong, accurate and reliable symbols of source and quality in the marketplace,” says Bob Liodice, President and CEO, ANA. “Brand confusion, dilution and other abuses also pose risks of cyber predator harms, consumer privacy violations, identity theft and cyber security breaches. The decision to go forward with the program also violates sound public policy and contravenes ICANN’s Code of Conduct and its undertakings with the United States Department of Commerce.” So OK, the ANA raises some points, but points that have been debated interminably. And where was the ANA? Apparently not at the meetings and now they have woken up and demand the process be stopped. Give me a break. The ANA is a professional organisation that, so they say has more than 400 companies as members, representing in excess of 10,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing, communications and advertising each year, presumably in the US. So with all these members and all this support, why have they only now woken up to the new gTLD process? To read more of the ANA’s criticisms and a link to their letter, see the news release on their website at www.ana.net/content/show/id/21790 .

The newly created country of South Sudan has been allocated the .SS country code by an International Telecommunications Union special council of Ministers resolution. South Sudan came into being as a nation on 9 July when it officially separated from the Republic of Sudan following a referendum of people in the former Sudan. The .SS country code will soon be issued Madut Biar Yel, Minister for Telecommunications and Postal Services, told BNO News. Biar said the ministry has applied for the ccTLD but did not have a date when it would be formalised. “A country code may seem like a small thing, but it is a real signifier of sovereignty and independence,” said Dr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General, ITU, speaking of the allocation of the international dialling code 211. Much the same could be said, and in this day and age probably even more so, of the importance of the allocation of the .SS country code Top Level Domain as this is instantly recognisable. “We join with the international community in congratulating the government and people of South Sudan on achieving full nationhood. As a young developing country there will be challenges, but the power of modern connectivity will bring a tremendous boost in areas such as commerce, health and education. ITU is here to help with advice on the necessary steps towards improved connectivity.”

July 6, 2011 — Power and cooling technology provider Eaton Corporation recently opened two new data centers in Louisville and Simpsonville, Kentucky, according to a report by Data Center Knowledge.

Web Hosting – SAN JOSE, CA – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced a new green data center in Allen, Texas, with an architecture deploying Cisco’s entire data center technology portfolio spanning computing, switching, and data storage access to support Cisco’s internal private cloud and deliver Information Technology (IT) as a service. The new data center demonstrates the value of a network-based approach through improved resilience, performance and use of resources, while delivering IT services such as video, mobility, security, and collaboration to Cisco employees, customers, partners, and other constituents.

Web Hosting – SANTA CLARA, CA – Vantage Data Centers, an innovative wholesale data center operator backed by the largest U.S. technology-based private equity firm, today announced the start of construction on V2 Santa Clara. V2 is the second building housed within the Vantage Santa Clara Campus and will provide data center modules designed to scale the facility from 9 to 18 MWs, allowing customers to immediately request more power without any additional construction, moving of equipment or service disruption