Ok, so which region does Mars fall into?

Indeterminate at this time for an organization that is based on Mars. For organizations based on

Earth, they can utilize their regional RIR for their number resource needs under existing policies.

Ok great. So we end up with agencies drawing prefixes from three different RIRs and zero aggregation. No thank you, that’s exactly what I’d like to avoid.

Each RIR community has a service organization (their RIR) which has services and fees, governed by a member-elected body.

In addition, each community has a policy development process where they establish and update registry policies.

Agencies may want to "place address space requests for outer space” but it’s a little more than that - self-governance of Internet

number resources mean that they will need to participate in these things in order to to make sure that it meets their needs.

That’s a tall bar that you’re setting. Does every ISP today have to participate?

ISPs participate in at least one RIR in order to obtain and manage their number resources.

The level of participation varies, with some also participating in the RIR’s policy development

processes, some getting involved in RIR governance, and some doing both. Many ISPs don’t

get involved until there’s issue of great interest to them, and in the meantime rely the efforts of

their colleagues to handle more routine matters.

What about end users? The agencies have a role more akin to enterprises in that they are not service providers to external entities.

If they want to use an existing RIR for such, that’s great - that RIR’s community will establish appropriate policies, fees, and

services. If they want to establish a new RIR,, that’s also a great option, and the resulting RIR (once recognized) will perform

these functions. As to whether that’s just "a detail”, I would say it is not - since the choice will determine how you go about

getting the policy that you need established.

Does that help clarify things?

Not really. They are mission focused. Their requirement is address space. Full stop. They have about as much interest interest in RIR policies as my kids do.

Which is actually quite similar to many ISPs… but then again, there are existing policies which

clearly cover the requests that most ISPs need to make for number resources, and that is not

the case with respect to policies for IP addressing for other planets.

How about we just extend those policies along the lines that I’ve described?

Tony