Net Nard / The Parts That Must Be Coordinated

Addresses Are Allocated, Not Chosen By Their Users

Numbering a global network requires handing out identifiers in an orderly way, which is a second genuinely coordinated function.

Every network that participates needs identifiers for the machines it connects, and those identifiers face the same uniqueness problem as names. If two networks could each pick the same identifier, traffic meant for one could arrive at the other, and neither party could resolve the confusion locally. The solution is allocation. Blocks of identifiers are handed out through a tiered arrangement, from a global level to regional bodies to the operators who ultimately use them, with each level keeping records of what it has assigned.

This is closer to administration than to control. The bodies that allocate identifiers do not decide what networks do with them, who those networks may serve, or what traffic they may carry. They keep a register and apply agreed policies about who is eligible for how much. The policies themselves are typically developed in open forums where operators and other interested parties argue them out, rather than being handed down. It is a bureaucratic function in the least pejorative sense: unglamorous, essential, and deliberately limited in scope.

Scarcity has complicated matters over time. When identifiers of a given kind run short, allocation stops being routine and starts involving hard choices about who gets what, and markets tend to develop around whatever is scarce. Newer arrangements with far more identifiers available have been introduced to relieve this, though adoption across independent networks proceeds at each operator's own pace, which is precisely the pattern you would expect in a system where nobody can compel anybody. The transition is a good illustration of how change actually happens here.