[ppml] Fw: IRS goes IPv6!

[George Kuzmowycz]

Thomas Narten <narten at us.ibm.com> wrote on 02/22/2006 9:14 AM:
> Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com writes:
> 
>> > In other words, ARIN should
>> > not adopt a policy in which users assume they are getting a
routable
>> > address block, when in fact, there is a real possibility that it
will
>> > not be routable in the future. 
> 
>> Routability is not a feature that ARIN includes with address
>> blocks today.
> 
> ARIN makes no guarantees (as it can't). But that does not mean that
> there aren't general expectations, or that the adopted policies are
> understood to have certain (general) results. We shoudl not be blind
> to the implications or consequences of our policies.

This is where the discussion gets interesting, at least to me. Are
these 
"general expectations" or "understood results" handed down on stone
tablets, or is there room for such expectations to change?

I understand that "end-to-end" is dogma, but will the market continue
to want that? If my business (an end-user customer) is willing to pay
for an address allocation understanding that at some undefined time 
in the future its routability may become more problematic, is that a
decision that ARIN policy will allow us to make? Should ARIN policy
even speak to that issue?

Perhaps the market will decide differently a few years from now, if
or when routing tables become more bloated than then-prevalent
hardware can handle. Again, ignoring the religious aspect of 
protocol design, if my business is perfectly happy with the idea
that IPv4 or IPv6 or IPv8 packets cannot reach us from, say, China,
and our packets cannot get there, will there be a viable business
model and - perhaps more importantly - address assignment policies
allowing the providing of that sort of connectivity?

The instant question, I think, is should today's allocation policy
proceed on the assumption that every packet will have to be
able to reach every destination forever? Or can it say these 
ranges, or these sizes, may have a problem 5 years from now,
caveat emptor? Isn't ARIN already telling ISP's what to do?