[arin-ppml] fair warning: less than 1000 days left to IPv4 exhaustion

At 12:11 PM -0700 5/5/08, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
>Any company that opens it's doors in 3 years is either going to be
>small, in which case they get IP numbering from their ISP and
>NOT from the RIRs
>...
>The small fry if they need IPv4 they will just go shopping for a
>different ISP if the one that they have can't provide it.

At the moment of RIR IPv4 depletion, there'll will be variation
among individual ISPs in the amount of IPv4 space remaining
for new customer growth (based on the time and size of their
last allocation per NRPM 4.2.2 or 4.2.4).  Given the limited
customer benefits of IPv6, customers are likely to value the
status quo and seek ISPs who still have available IPv4 space
just as you noted above.   However, one would expect these
ISPs to deplete their last allocation at an accelerated pace
and (in the absence of some alternative solution) wouldn't
this make ISP shopping for IPv4 simply a transient condition?

/John

(the above are purely my own personal musings on the topic)