[LINK] RFI: Geolocation based on IP-Address

[Glen Turner]

On Thu, 2007-09-27 at 11:13 +1000, Roger Clarke wrote:
> BGP data is for operational management of the network.  It's 
> equivalent to the kinds of data that are tightly controlled within 
> the PSTN.
> 
> Am I being naive in considering that BGP data shouldn't be available 
> to a generic service-provider like http://www.ip2location.com/?

If you believe that only telcos should be running complex internet
networks then BGP data can be private.

But the Internet was a response to the failure of the telcos to
provide a reasonable data communications service. So there are
many complex networks attached to the Internet which have nothing
to do with telcos.

In that environment BGP data needs to be public so that engineering
staff have a hope of debugging routing issues.


It's likely that BGP data will need to be even more widely shared.
Example: to allow peer-to-peer networks to make better decisions
         about where to place nodes.  That's important in Australia,
         where sending the same data back-and-forth across the expensive
         international links really hurts.

Australian researchers are actually leaders in the anonymisation of
BGP data; search for the publications of Matt Roughan of The University
of Adelaide (and previously, AT&T Research). As well as BGP that work
applies to inter-domain MPLS routing and inter-domain light path
topology discovery.

-- 
 Glen Turner