On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 7:28 PM Tony Li <tony.li@tony.li> wrote:
Hi David,
The Moon and Mars are irrelevant to this discussion; there are no people, no legal system, no contracts, or no companies on the Moon or Mars. For missions to those bodies, all those things exist here on Earth, not on the Moon or Mars.
From a routing perspective, governance, people, legal systems, contracts, and companies are irrelevant. What is relevant is devices that speak IP and their topological location. We obviously already have devices on Mars and the moon. More coming. Next month, humans will be briefly added to the mix.
People, legal systems, and contracts are necessary components of our society, which has organized itself to create spacecraft already on the Moon and Mars; ignoring them at this point is counterproductive, as without them, you would not have spacecraft on the Moon or Mars to route any packets.
I think the proper example for missions to the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies is Antarctica. While technically Antarctica is in ARIN's service region, entities that operate bases there obtain Internet resources from the RIR for the home country of the operating entity, or from the service provider they use for connectivity. This is so the administrative and technical people work with those they are familiar with, and contracts are formed in accordance with the legal systems in the RIR's service region.
And if there was the prospect of an interconnected network there with a proliferation of devices, I would be equally concerned. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the long-term growth prospects are similar.
I apologize for not being clear. Let me see if I can do better. The
point is to have a single point of contact where agencies can place address space requests for outer space. Whether that is an existing or new RIR is a detail. The goal is aggregation for efficient routing. How do we get there? If I need to say something differently, please send text.
Tony
Are you really sure the organizations that will use these resource blocks want a single contact and a single contracting entity within a single legal jurisdiction?
I know that the organizations (space agencies) that will use these resources are NOT experts in networking. For them, this is one minor technology that helps enable their missions. Hopefully, they will follow our recommendations about how to deploy IP and aggregate their prefixes. We owe it to them to make this possible and convenient.
The scientists and engineers who operate the missions don't care, but contract personnel, lawyers, and even network engineers across all those organizations do care and participate to ensure the organizations get what they need. You need to talk to the contracting personnel, lawyers, and network engineers in those organizations. I guarantee they will care, or at least they should. I come from a similar mission-focused organization. And my job is to ensure my scientists can transfer petabytes of data to supercomputers for processing and work with collaborators worldwide. They don't care how it happens, but they do care that it happens, and that my job and literally hundreds of other people in the Research and Education Networking (REN) community worldwide. We are subject matter experts who work with contracting personnel and lawyers in our organizations to obtain equipment and other resources to make that happen. Similar people exist in space agencies and their contractors; I know they do. I work with them from time to time. Because my scientists also consume data from space missions.
NASA and US-based commercial space entities would likely be fine with contracting through ARIN and under US Law. However, ESA and European commercial space entities might prefer contracting through RIPE with Dutch and EU Laws.
Agreed, but then we end up with an ARIN block and a RIPE block in space (and more…). They want to interconnect their networks for mutual backup and suddenly we have a routing mess.
Those are the policies for 2000::/3, which call for hirecical infrastructue based aggregation. Define what you expect from a new block with some detail, and define the technical details of how the aggregation should work. Don't define who should do what or how; leave this to IANA and the RIRs.
Furthermore, China and India might prefer to continue working with APNIC as they do now. Unfortunately, today, the Earth's political and legal environment will shape operations and the governance of missions to the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies, and the Internet Technical community isn't going to be able to change that.
That seems defeatist. We haven’t even tried.
Maybe, but I don't think the Internet technical community can change the legal and political environment we live in today. I think we have to live within it.
Now, I would support allocating an IPv6 prefix outside 2000::/3 and a block of ASNs for Outer Space and for entities supporting spacecraft and missions to the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies. The distinction should be that satellites that provide service to Earth come from 2000::/3. However, satellites, ground stations, and other systems, such as ground simulators that support missions to the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies, should use this new prefix and block of ASNs.
We are in agreement this far.
But allocations from this block should be administered and registered through the current RIRs, in my opinion.
So then we end up with all RIRs jointly managing this block? How does that work? How does NASA get a Mars prefix that aggregates with a Mars prefix that RIPE assigns to ESA?
The RIRs already jointly manage 2000::/3 with policies optimized for hierarchical infrastructure-based aggregation, as charged by the IETF. If you want a new block with other policies, define what you are looking for, but don't get hung up on how to accomplish it; focus on the details of the aggregation properties you want.
Unless you want to invite an international treaty organization to administer the blocks, however, the Internet technical community has to date resisted the involvement of such an organization in Internet resource management
I don’t much care who does the administration, as long as it gets done in a coordinated and useful way. Having multiple players all trying to manage a common resource seems like a recipe for disaster.
I think you are focusing on the allocation function, which is just one small component, and it might be simpler if one entity handled it. However, there are other components to the administration, contracting, a service desk, etc. These components are better regionalised; this is why the RiR system was created.
So, my vision would be for the TIPTOP WG to produce a document proposing the allocation of an IPv6 block outside of 2000::/3 and a block of ASNs, define the qualifications for use of the block, and request that IANA and the RIRs develop policies to ensure allocations to organizations are consistent with those qualifications.
That is already the jist of my draft. Please help me with the wording.
I think you need to address George Herbert's question about transit. When I read the document, it seemed like a spacecraft magically appeared in orbit around the celestial body in question, yet it can take years for a spacecraft to get there. When I read your document, it sounds like the RIRs have ignored outer space. To the contrary, the RIRs haven't been charged with thinking about outer space. So far, the RIRs have only been asked to create a system that allocates resources to ISPs on Earth and with hierarchical infrastructure-based aggregation. Your document needs to have the IETF authorize IANA to allocate an IPv6 block outside 2000::/3 and a block of ASNs for use in outer space, specifically for missions to other celestial bodies. Provide details on how the desired celectual body-based aggregation is to work. Then ask the RIRs to create policies to allocate space to space agencies and their contractors based on the desired celestial body-based aggregation. Regards,
Tony
-- Thank you / Ho Pidamayado / Miigwech =============================================== David Farmer Email:farmer@umn.edu Networking & Telecommunication Services Office of Information Technology University of Minnesota 2829 University Ave SE Phone: 612-626-0815 Minneapolis, MN 55414 Cell: 612-812-9952 ===============================================