[arin-discuss] Food for thought: IPv4 accountability.

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Breault,

   You had asked "...without being unfair for others..."  and the 
fairness aspect is what I was responding to.  My personal belief is that 
IPv4 runout will be a fundamentally unfair event for many reasons - the 
issue of large ISP's not offering IPv6 right now is just one of the many 
reasons it will be unfair.

   But, here is my belief, the unfairness will be merely that the ISP's 
who aren't paying attention will be broadsided, those will be the roadkill.

   I very seriously doubt that ANYONE subscribed to this list will be in 
that group.  Anyone subscribed here already knows what's coming down the 
pike. The shift will be "fair" to ALL ISP's that right now, start 
getting ready for it, whether they are big or small.  It will only be 
unfair when you compare those ISP's who are planning for it, against the 
rest of the crowd out there who isn't.

   Your absolutely right that the large networks need to start routing 
IPv6.  Some are, the majority, at least in the US, probably aren't.
Looking glass on my router - its http://whois.ipinc.net/cgi-bin/lg.pl
if you want to see for yourself - only shows a grand total of
1935 network entries for IPv6 routes vs 289378 network entries for
IPv4 routes.  In short, a bit more than half of 1% of all advertising 
AS's on the Internet are advertising both IPv4 and IPv6.  And, IPv4 
runout per http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html states current 
date of exhaustion in 3 years, tops, so somehow in the next 3 years we 
are supposed to go from less than 1% to 100% of all ASs on the Internet 
being dual-stacked?  Yeah, right.  That's a train wreck in the making if 
there ever was one.

I think we all seriously have to face the fact that it's already too 
late for IPv6 migration to be done right.  Rule changes that may have 
made it more fair should have been done a decade ago.  They weren't 
then, because everyone figured "Oh we have a decade to figure it out" 
Now the decade is over and people are still undecided as to what to do. 
  The train wreck will have happened and the mess will be cleaned up 
before everyone agrees.

There is still enough time right now for an individual ISP that has a 
network manager with any common sense, to get it together to save their 
ISP for themselves and be ready for the transition.  But there's not 
enough time to save the rest of the ISP's out there who are fat, dumb 
and happy, and utterly oblivious.


Ted

Breault Jonathan wrote:
> Ted,
> 
> My email wasn't about small isps that are thinking that running out of ips
> will stop their growth.... Its not about Isp profitability ... Its not
> about money ... I am not saying that ipv4 migration to ipv6 will be the end
> of the world... Its about being able to do ipv6 migration right ...
> 
> I might be the only one to believe that we can't fully switch to IPV6 by
> converting smaller isps to the tier1 ... Tier1 and large backbone tier2 need
> to go to ipv6 first, there is no work  real work around to it ... until we
> see a couple Tier1 doing native IPV6 on all their POPs...
> 
>  I still think that forcing a better usage of IPV4 will help the goal of
> going to ipv6 Faster ... When I see that we gave out a /9 to verizon I cant
> see how we are trying to help the cause of IPV6 ... We all need to go Ipv6
> one day, but its hard without native ipv6 available and heaven harder to
> drop ipv4 ... If we
> 
> IPv4 will still be needed for a couple of years... So why don't we all try
> to get it done right ?
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> Le 22/07/09 2:55 PM, « Ted Mittelstaedt » <tedm at ipinc.net> a écrit :
> 
>> Ultimately it boils down to the following:
>>
>> Current customers of ISP's all have an IPv4 address assigned.
>>
>> There will come a point for ALL ISP's whether they are /8 holders
>> or small ones, where they won't have any more IPv4 than what they
>> already have handed out to existing customers.  There won't be
>> any more IPv4, either from begging ARIN or buying it from someone else,
>> no matter how much you are willing to pay.
>>
>> At that point, NEW customers of those ISP's will be told that
>> they either have to do IPv6 or nothing.
>>
>> For a period of time, those new customers will probably go to other
>> ISPs that still have IPv4.
>>
>> But eventually, ALL ISP's will be out of IPv4 and those new customers
>> will have to take IPv6 or nothing.
>>
>> So, if your a growing ISP and you have lots of unused IPv4 you will
>> be able to grow for a longer time than a competitor who has a little
>> amount of unused IPv4.  You benefit and your competitor who has a small
>> amount of IPv4 unused will lose out - BUT they will ONLY lose out on GROWTH.
>>
>> In other words, if your a small ISP and YOUR MAKING MONEY then the
>> IPv4 runout merely means that while your out-of-IPv4, your competitors
>> will simply make more and more money than you.  It doesn't mean that you
>> will start LOSING money.  You will make the same money you have always
>> made.  If your feeding yourself and your family, then you will continue
>> to do so.
>>
>> Eventually, when there's no more ISP's that have IPv4 to give out, then
>> customers will be forced to take IPv6 - and you will be able to pick up
>> growing from where you left off.
>>
>> I think the problem here is that so many people in the ISP business are
>> assuming that growth is only going to happen by stealing customers.
>> Meaning, that if my competitors are growing, it's because they are
>> taking customers away from me, and I'm getting smaller.
>>
>> I humbly submit here that IPv4 depletion isn't going to work this way.
>> Just because you can't give IPv4 to new customers, because you have run
>> out, doesn't mean that your going to lose any existing ones.  And if you
>> do lose an existing customer then you will be back in the game and have
>> IPv4 to hand out that your existing customer was using.
>>
>> Thus, I don't buy the fairness arguments I see here.  ISPs need to
>> concentrate on making their existing customers happy with their service
>> - that's how you keep from losing customers.  And ISP's need to take the
>> long view and realize that the period of time after they have run out of
>> IPv4 and while all their other competitors are still giving out IPv4 is
>> going to be a lot shorter than they think.
>>
>> Some of these small ISP's complaining are are like a small restaurant
>> owner located in town who has an established clientele that likes his
>> food and is keeping him going, who wants to throw all that away so that
>> he can grow to the size of a Burger King or McDonalds, and have a
>> clientele who hates eating his food, and only goes there because they
>> are forced to by their kids who are demanding Happy Meals.
>>
>> So, as an ISP owner you would rather have customers who hate you but are
>> with you because your the only game in town with IPv4?  May I ask why
>> your even in the ISP business in the first place?  Do you even LIKE the
>> Internet?  Or is it nothing more than a convenient mechanism to make
>> money for you, and you would be just as happy selling life insurance
>> policies or something?
>>
>> Think about it.
>>
>> Ted
>>
>> Breault Jonathan wrote:
>>> Basically, I think the problem is that once you hold a resource from arin,
>>> you only need to justify when you request new resources... I think there is
>>> missing a policy that would allow ARIN to ask every 3-5 years for
>>> justification on the resources' usage and take action on the blocks that
>>> have a too small Usage Ratio.
>>>
>>> The question we all need to ask is, do we really want to produce
>>> justification on regular basis?
>>>
>>> What should we do with weak isp's?
>>>
>>> Going after the big historical allocation might be a way to release some ip
>>> blocks. But it can also affect people with smaller blocks ... Maybe we
>>> should give an incentive to holders of /20 that use 2 C classes on it so
>>> they just move to a /22 ...
>>>
>>> Maybe somebody on the list has ideas on how something like that can be
>>> achieved without being unfair for others...
>>>
>>>
>>> jonathan
>>>
>>> Le 22/07/09 12:10 PM, « John Curran » <jcurran at arin.net> a écrit :
>>>
>>>> On Jul 22, 2009, at 11:36 AM, Plimpton Ben wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> John
>>>>>
>>>>> If this were the case, once a smaller ISP had met your routing
>>>>> criteria, shouldn't we all then be able to request IP's based on
>>>>> what our needs will be for the next few months and not have to
>>>>> justify our previous allocations.
>>>> Ben - ARIN doesn't have routing criteria.  ARIN does have policies set
>>>> by the community which require an ISP to be able to justify a minimum
>>>> size block before being able to come directly to ARIN for an allocation.
>>>> Once you meet that minimum address requirement, you can come to
>>>> ARIN.
>>>>
>>>>> I'm guessing that at some point, organizations with large
>>>>> allocations have made requests for additional space without having
>>>>> to justify the usage on their other blocks or else this wouldn't be
>>>>> an issue b/c they would have filled them up already and the rest of
>>>>> the community wouldn't feel that they're squatting on their previous
>>>>> allocations.
>>>> Everytime you come for an additional allocation, you have to show
>>>> utilization of your existing address blocks.  This applies to equally to
>>>> all requesters.
>>>>
>>>> The concern expressed is that there are some folks who hold large
>>>> historically allocations of address space which do not come in at all
>>>> for additional allocations, and hence never have to show their usage.
>>>>
>>>> /John
>>>>
>>>> John Curran
>>>> President and CEO
>>>> ARIN
>>>>
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