In recent months proposals have been made for the introduction of competition into the system of allocation of IP addresses. In particular, calls have made for new IP address registries to be established which would compete with the existing Regional Internet address Registries. Specific proposals have been made by Houlin Zhao of the ITU-T and by Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project, both of which propose that the ITU itself could establish such a registry group, operating as a collection of national registries.

This is a response to these proposals by Paul Wilson, Director General of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), and Geoff Huston, Senior Internet Research Scientist at APNIC.

Could IP Addressing Benefit from the Introduction of Competitive Suppliers?