RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war • Hacker News Board

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#21

Post by skyfaller » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #17

Suppose you are a small Ukrainian ISP working in Berdyansk or Melitopol. In 2022 you essentially become an ISP working on Russian-held territory. Does RIPE want to just confiscate your address pool and redistribute it back in Ukraine in some form, leaving you without address space? How does that help the people living on that territory?

It may not directly help that ISP, but increasing numbers of the people living in that territory will be Russian invaders, as the Ukrainians living there are murdered or deported. And helping the invaders is problematic.

It may indirectly help that ISP or other ISPs in the future if the world makes a general policy of not supporting looting of IP addresses or anything else. If profits from looting are reduced, it may make invasions less likely, as both the rank & file and the leaders/oligarchs have less to gain. And people working at ISPs would generally benefit from their country not being invaded.

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#22

Post by t-3 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

These problems could be easily solved by moving to IPv6, but that doesn't leave any room for rent-seeking, so people would rather complain about nonsense like stealing IP addresses.

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#23

Post by MichaelZuo » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

It was always a bit confusing how RIPE got around the Crimea switchover in 2014. They must have found a way to reallocate the system over to Russian companies as Ukranian ISPs no longer serve the region, but how they managed to do so without officially acknowledging Russian sovereignty is a mystery. Especially since they keep extensive paperwork.

I asked about it on SE, https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/64179/does-acceptanc..., and there doesn't seem to be a way that this could have been legally accomplished without at the least rescinding recognition of Ukranian sovereignty over Crimea.

Which would imply, since all UN countries recognize RIPE NCC as the final and exclusive authority on internet allocation matters in the European region, that the world has stopped recognizing Crimea as Ukrainian, via one degree of separation.

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#24

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #18

Starting to wonder how much the global takeoff of the Internet and specifically the WWW was due to the "end of history" period from 1989-2001, when there wasn't significant conflict between major powers. I suspect the spillover from this will be increasing Balkanisation of the Internet simply in order to limit the extent to which it's a cyberwarfare or propaganda battlefield.

> limit the extent to which it's a cyberwarfare or propaganda battlefield.

This was already done years ago by concentrating "the internet" and limiting it to a few companies with ban-hammers ready.

What once used to be many many different personal webpages, blogs, forums, chat sites (and protocols), is now basically limited to facebook (facebook, whatsapp, instagram), twitter and google (plus some outliers, such as telegram). Even with the mainstream news services, a huge percentage of people read that (MSM) news on sites like facebook and twitter (or atleast get linked from there).

Other countries have their own bundles of services (wechat in china, yandex+vk in russia, etc.)

So basically from a million different sources, pages, social groups, we've gone down to single digits per language group... and all of them can be monitored and censored by a few individuals with few agendas.

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#25

Post by zajio1am » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #17

Suppose you are a small Ukrainian ISP working in Berdyansk or Melitopol. In 2022 you essentially become an ISP working on Russian-held territory. Does RIPE want to just confiscate your address pool and redistribute it back in Ukraine in some form, leaving you without address space? How does that help the people living on that territory?

The IP addresses are assigned to organizations (ISPs), not countries, so if you are the same ISP, it does not really matter which country held the territory. The article is more about risk of ukrainian ISPs on occupied territories being forced 'at gunpoint' to transfer their IP addresses to russian ISPs.

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#26

Post by bombcar » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #23

It was always a bit confusing how RIPE got around the Crimea switchover in 2014. They must have found a way to reallocate the system over to Russian companies as Ukranian ISPs no longer serve the region, but how they managed to do so without officially acknowledging Russian sovereignty is a mystery. Especially since they keep extensive paperwork. I asked about it on SE, https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/64179/d…

The reality that people don't want to admit in all these things is that the laws, etc, get pushed aside to acknowledge the "reality" in the end - might makes right and possession is 9/10ths of the law always triumphs.

And those involved often know not to push things too far when it's "working" - something like "we'll let the Russians route these IPs as long as they don't crow about routing these IPs".

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#27

Post by bombcar » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #18

Starting to wonder how much the global takeoff of the Internet and specifically the WWW was due to the "end of history" period from 1989-2001, when there wasn't significant conflict between major powers. I suspect the spillover from this will be increasing Balkanisation of the Internet simply in order to limit the extent to which it's a cyberwarfare or propaganda battlefield.

The takeoff of the Internet was mainly because nobody was paying attention to it and it became a new frontier - literally - and was very wild-west for a time. That time is ending.

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#28

Post by bombcar » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

prvit wrote: post #10

It is pretty surprising that RIPEs solution to sanctions is to just offer their services for free to those who can’t pay due to sanctions.

Many things operate this way - you want to charge people who can pay but offer the service for free to those who actually cannot pay (either because of sanctions or lack of funds, etc). The tricky part is avoiding abuse; but "country claiming it is sanctioned when it is not" is pretty unlikely.

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#29

Post by cmeacham98 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #23

It was always a bit confusing how RIPE got around the Crimea switchover in 2014. They must have found a way to reallocate the system over to Russian companies as Ukranian ISPs no longer serve the region, but how they managed to do so without officially acknowledging Russian sovereignty is a mystery. Especially since they keep extensive paperwork. I asked about it on SE, https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/64179/d…

I don't follow the logic that RIPE has to acknowledge Russia's claim on Crimea as legit to do this.

As far as I can tell, the following statements are true independent of who you think rightly owns Crimea:

1. RIPE is the ultimate authority over IP address assignments in Europe as recognized by the relevant governments here

2. The Crimea region became served by different ISPs than before (for whatever reason)

3. RIPE exercised its authority to transfer Crimea's IP address assignments to the company(s) currently serving the region

Re: RIPE meetings: IP addresses as spoils of war

#30

Post by bombcar » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #17

Suppose you are a small Ukrainian ISP working in Berdyansk or Melitopol. In 2022 you essentially become an ISP working on Russian-held territory. Does RIPE want to just confiscate your address pool and redistribute it back in Ukraine in some form, leaving you without address space? How does that help the people living on that territory?

There are millions of questions like this - and at some point the small Ukrainian ISP is de facto a small Russian ISP.

Often the best thing to do in (reality, practicality) is let things continue as they were, even if technically you could cut them off entirely "as punishment to the Russians" - because it wouldn't actually punish any Russians whatsoever, but would hurt the people on the ground.