RE: Chinese bgp metering story

[Bill Woodcock <woody () pch net>]

      On Fri, 18 Dec 2009, Deepak Jain wrote:
    > ITU is already acknowledging that BGP isn't its baby, so it has nothing to say there. 

Yes, that was the successful (for us) outcome of the meeting, which would 
not have been the case had we not been prepared and had people there.

Just to explain the general danger here...  The ITU is the standards body 
in which international spectrum allocations and satellite lots are 
negotiated.  No industrialized country will withdraw from that.  Because 
it's an international treaty organization, member countries are bound to 
enforce the outcome of its decisions within their jurisdictions, 
regardless of whether they agreed with the decision or not.  If the ITU 
had decided to take the BGP spec from the IETF, the IETF could easily have 
told them to take a hike, but national governments could not have done so, 
and that would put national governments in the very uncomfortable position 
of having to try to enact or support that change in law somehow.

With the BGP spec, this all seems a bit ridiculous and abstract, but with 
IP allocation, the danger is a little more immediate.  The decision on 
that will mostly be made in mid-March.

                                -Bill