Critical resource: An institutional economics of the Internet addressing-routing space

Milton Mueller

Telecommunications Policy, 2010, vol. 34, issue 8, 405-416

Abstract: This paper links the analysis of IP address policy to the established vocabulary and concepts of institutional economics. Internet addressing and routing are usually discussed in technical terms, yet embedded in this highly technical discourse are a number of critical economic concepts, such as scarcity, externalities, common pool resources, tragedy of the commons, and conflict over the distribution of costs. To solve these problems, governance institutions native to the Internet have evolved. Yet despite the centrality of addressing and routing to Internet governance, there is very little research literature that bridges economic, institutional and technical discussions of IP addressing and routing. This paper connects the techno-economic discussion to analysis of institutions and governance arrangements.

Keywords: IP; addresses; Internet; governance; Institutional; economics; Regional; Internet; Registries; Common; pool; resources; IPv6; Internet; protocol; version; 6; ARIN; RIPE; APNIC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030859611000056X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:telpol:v:34:y:2010:i:8:p:405-416

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... /30471/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin

More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().