[ARIN-consult] [ARIN-Suggestions] Response to Suggestion 2015.9: CONVERT IPV4 COUNTDOWN TO SCIENTIFIC NOTATION

[John Curran]

On Jul 6, 2015, at 10:54 PM, Hannigan, Martin <marty at akamai.com> wrote:
> A complete representation of every _single address in ARIN’s possession at all times would be perfectly reasonable to request and to expect. I prefer David’s notation, and /24’s would be perfectly fine and enable most less-technical people to easily understand. We are out.
> 
> Transparency, anyone?

A vote for transparency in the representation of the entire address registry is incongerous with 
providing just a single counter of /24’s in the IPv4 free pool, as the one dimensional nature of a 
counter does not doesn’t provide any meaningful information about the distribution of available
address blocks.

Once the  the "/8 equivalents” counter is deprecated at IPv4 runout, we can include a summation 
(at the bottom of the IPv4 available block inventory) in /24 equivalents for those who want an easy 
reference to the total.   Changing the current counter and providing that information absent the full
context of the actual inventory would be extremely misleading in certain circumstances (such as 
immediately after IANA remaining block distribution.)

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN