[ppml] Policy Proposal: Expand timeframe of Additional Requests

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

-----Original Message-----
From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of
Alexander, Daniel
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 10:03 AM
To: ppml at arin.net
Subject: Re: [ppml] Policy Proposal: Expand timeframe of Additional Requests


>Scott,

>I think of hoarding occurring in two ways.

Hi Dan,

  One of the things I would like to point out for the list is that there
seems
to be an assumption that after IPv4 runout, that IPv4 addresses will
increase
or at least, retain, value.  This assumption is necessary for all of the
gloom
and doom scenarios.  After all nobody hoards items that have no, or
a declining, value.

  I feel this assumption is seriously flawed for several perhaps obvious,
reasons I'll detail here:

1) Return.  IPv4 runout will cause some organizations to begin the process
of
switching over to IPv6.  As they do this they will no longer have need of
IPv4
and will be able to start renting/selling it or returning it to the RIR.
Right
now I feel a glaring policy hole is there does not seem to be financial
incentive
to return IPv4 and every time it's been suggested (primariarly in
conjunction
with the legacy holders) it's been shouted down - but sooner or later people
will
come to their senses and realize that getting orgs to return IPv4 will help
to accellerate adoption of IPv6 - because even if the returned IPv4 is never
used,
you can point to "ACME, Inc" and state with authority that they have no
allocated
or assigned IPv4 and if they can do IPv6 you can too.

Besides, return of IPv4 is essential to nipping any "ebay Inc trade of IPv4"
numbers
in the bud, which most people agree is something we want to do.  Nobody is
going
to risk building a business plan on selling their IPv4 when there is a
chance that
without warning a large chunk of IPv4 will be returned to the RIR which can
then
commence filling any pending IPv4 requests, and kill all your potential
customers.

2) Sheer growth.  A lot has been claimed how the legacy assignments are a
drop in
the bucket.  Well, I will ask the question - if every IPv4 allocation ARIN
makes from
this day forward to the date of IPv4 runout in 5 years or so went straight
to a
hoarder, then wouldn't that mean that as of IPv4 runout date if all hoarders
were
to immediately start selling their hoards, wouldn't that really only
constitute
just a 5 year supply of IPv4?

If someone out there were hoarding a 20-year supply of IPv4 then you might
have
something to be worried about.  But it seems to me that it's now way too
late to
start hoarding IPv4 anyhow - sure a few people might do it and make a little
bit
of money, but we are talking garage operators.

An anaology is this - there are a few people out there making a living
selling
used cars over Ebay.  But that has not resulted in the closure of car
dealerships
across the land.  There's not enough market for car sales through Ebay to
have
an impact on the economy - just as there isn't going to be enough hoarded
IPv4
out there to make any impact on the future growth of the Internet.

3) History.  The history of technology change has been that as soon as
something
new is introduced, people start getting afraid of being left behind and they
will jump on the new thing, even if the old thing works as well or even
better.
For example, you can go buy old used desktop Bell telephones with push
buttons, using
old technology, that sound 1000% better than the new piece-of-crap phones
that
sell at Target for more money.  But people buy the new piece-of-crap phones
because they think they are better just because they are new.

Clearly IPv4 will be able to handle networking traffic post-IPv4 runout, but
it seems to me that once people have to start deploying IPv6 that a lot of
them
will start thinking it works better to handle networking traffic, merely
because
it's newer, not because of any logical reason.  Witness the old Betamax vs
VHS
wars.  Both formats were neck and neck for a while then VHS got ahead and
it was like a cascade failure - very rapidly betamax vanished.

My feeling is that as soon as a tipping point is reached that IPv4 will
disappear
very rapidly.  And that tipping point is going to be triggered by IPv4
runout,
without anyone's help.  We just need to figure out if there's anything we
can
do to reduce the time between the date of IPv4 runout and the date of the
tipping
point.

Ted