[ppml] 2005-1:Business Need for PI Assignments

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

> What I mean is - I have yet to be convinced that there is a concrete 
> reason to assign gobs of addresses to my house.  Why not dole out 
> IPv6 a few addresses at a time until it's clear I need a /48 or /52 
> or /60. 

Because history has shown that this is a *BAD* idea. This thinking
is behind telephone billing systems. Why should you pay for the 
time when you are not making a phonecall? It sounds logical but we
know that the end result was in the mid 1990's, 75% of the cost of
the telecom systems was in the telephone billing systems and the
support for billing systems throughout the network. Do we want to
recreate this with IPv6?

The lesson of flat rate billing systems is that it is cheaper overall
for everyone when you just overprovision the network and just share
the costs according to a simple, predictable, pre-calculated system.
It may seem that bandwidth is wasted, but the alternative is to waste
money on complex billing and accounting systems. IPv6 may appear to 
waste addresses but in reality, it is spending those addresses to buy
a simpler overall addressing architecture that saves everyone money.
Simple is good.

> My lack of addresses (when I am home) isn't what's holding 
> back innovation.  Wouldn't my squandering addresses be a bigger risk 
> to future innovation?

Not at all. Innovation comes about when traditional ways of doing
things can no longer cope. It has nothing to do with IPv6 address 
conservation. If we run out of IPv6 addresses in the year 2105, then
that may spark some innovation.

--Michael Dillon