[ppml] Policy Proposal: Decreasing Exponential Rationing of IPv4 IP Addresses

[Iljitsch van Beijnum]

On 24-aug-2007, at 20:29, Dean Anderson wrote:

>> Stretching IPv4 only means that people will delay the move to IPv6,

> This seems to be the unproven assumption

Hm, IPv4 addresses are still available and few people are using IPv6.  
Maybe not "proof" but so far the facts are on my side.

> IPv4 will continue after exhaustion of the Available
> pool.  Address space will be returned or reclaimed, and allocations  
> will
> eventually resume.  Exhaustion in this case just creates a bump in  
> IPv4
> operations.  That bump, and consequences of the bump, can be avoided.

Yes, and after all the cars have been turned into big piles of rust,  
you'll be able to get oil again, too. But that doesn't mean things  
revert back to the way they were before.

> However, there is no case where that bump greatly improves the
> transistion to IPv6.

There are enough extremely pigheaded people in the world, it's  
possible that they'll forego IPv6 even when IPv4 moves past its  
expiration date.

> Just the opposite.

Huh?

> Your scheme seems to be desperate and makes me
> more suspicious of IPv6.  If IPv6 could stand on its own merits, you
> wouldn't need to try to wreck IPv4 to promote it.

I'm not trying to wreck IPv4. I'm trying to keep it in a usable state  
as long as possible, which means continuing to fullfil address  
requests. As soon as people can't get IPv4 addresses at the required  
levels anymore, bad things start happen. As soon as having IPv6  
connectivity is a reasonable substitue for having IPv4 connectivity,  
the bad things stop. It would be great if we could make the latter  
happen before the former, but due to the network effect this is  
pretty much impossible: nobody gains any advantage from being the  
first to implement IPv6 as long as it's reasonably possible to use  
IPv4 instead.

This has nothing to do with merits, just with the fact that you can  
reach 99.9% of the world over IPv4 and 0.1% over IPv6.

> However, your attempt at wrecking IPv4 will fail, because IPv4 will
> survive,

(Do I hear a disco song in the distance?)

> albeit with disruption and other more nasty problems that are
> entirely avoidable.  This is just an irresponsible attempt at
> destruction, by people trying to promote IPv4.

Right, and so many people are now running AppleTalk, IPX, DECNET and  
so on.

China has gotten 30 million addresses so far this year. That's more  
than all year last year. Once China has caught up, the really poor  
countries are next in line. IPv4 can't sustain our growing  
communication needs, it's as simple as that.

> I'm going to have to look into IPv6, to find out what's wrong with it,
> that you would need to disrupt Ipv4.

I recommend reading a good book about it.

>> My assumption of what would happen when we run out (in the absense of
>> new policies) is that if a request comes in for more address space
>> than is available, the request is denied A request for a smaller
>> amount of address space that can still be accommodated would be
>> honored. If you want your policy to work like that, you should say
>> that in the proposal.

> Well, this happens with or without rationing.

You didn't specify that in your proposal.

> None of your arguments make any difference under rationing or not
> rationing. So, they don't have any relevance to rationing.

If you are an ISP that is going to connect a million customers in the  
next few months, you need a million addresses. If you only get  
800000, 80000, 8000 or 800, you have a problem. The severity of the  
problem may differ slightly, but in each case, you have a problem  
that you don't have if you get that million addresses. By giving out  
address space while it lasts we don't start creating problems before  
we have to so people have more time to be proactive.