A public answer to a private question as I have been sitting on a beach for awhile without the laptop and missed some related conversations ... :)

Is the outcome really open for discussion on the PI issue? It doesn't sound like it is.

In the minds of some the route scaling issue outweighs any argument for PI. When taken to its extreme, there is a valid point that a broken routing system serves no one. At the same time the dogmatic stance by the ISPs enforcing lock-in is just as broken both for large organizations with financial or legal requirements for operational stability, and the individual consumer/small business with limited budgets looking for true competition. The hard part is finding the middle ground in a way that limits the exposure to a potential routing collapse. I personally refuse to declare some needs legitimate and others not, as the only point of such differentiation is to establish a power broker. When all uses are legitimate, the problem boils down to the technical approach that can be scaled as necessary to contain growth in the routing system. This is the logic that leads me to the bit-interleaved geo that can be aggregated in varying size pockets as necessary using existing BGP deployments. We can start flat and implement aggregation over time when a region becomes too large to handle. One nice side effect of this geo approach is that it mitigates the continuing political demands for sovereign rights to IPv6 space. Any aggregation approach will force the business models to change from current practice. That is not as bad a thing as the alarmists will make it out to be, because their accountants are claiming the current model is a broken money looser as it is (which if so means they will eventually change anyway). The primary difference is that there will need to be aggregation intermediaries between the last-mile and transit providers. The current model eliminates these middle-men by trading off their routing mitigation service against a larger routing table (actually they already exist in the right places but are currently limited to layer2 media aggregators). The anti-PI bunch is trying to use social engineering to directly counter the bottom line business reality that the customer will always win in the end. Rather than accept this situation and constructively work on the necessary business model and technology developments, they effectively stall progress by staunchly claiming there is no acceptable technical approach that works within the current business structure. Making the RIRs be the police deciding who qualifies for PI and who does not just adds to their workload and raises costs. The beneficiaries of this gatekeeper approach are the ISPs that claim they need full routing knowledge everywhere, while the cost burden for supporting the waste-of-time qualification/evaluation work is borne by the applicant. Given that the most vocal and organized membership in the RIR community are the ISPs it is easy to understand why it would seem like the PI issue is already decided as closed. I tend to believe it will just drag out until enough of the corporate world becomes aware of the IPv4 exhaustion in light of their growth needs that they collectively appear at their RIR and demand an immediate solution. Unfortunately this 'wait till the last minute' tactic will likely result in a reactionary quickie with its own set of long term side effects. A while back I tried to hold a BOF on geo PI in the IETF, but was told that shim6 was the anointed solution. Now that at least nanog has told the IAB where to put shim6 it might be possible to get the current IESG to reconsider. In any case the result would be a technical approach that would still require RIRs to establish policies around. As long as they are dominated by the ISPs it will be difficult to get real PI. Tony