[ppml] Combining Forecasts

[Michael K. Smith - Adhost]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf
Of
> Keith W. Hare
> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 6:04 AM
> To: ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [ppml] Combining Forecasts
> 
> How accurate to we need to be?  The projection that we are likely to
> run
> out of available IP addresses sometime in 2010 should be enough
> motivation to push IPv6.
> 
> Keith
> 

If we are going to use the forecasts to incent people to move from IPv4
to IPv6 then we should be as accurate as possible.  If we tell the
community we won't run out until 2019 (or whenever) and we run out in
2010 there is likely to be an outcry from the community that we did not
help them effectively prepare for the inevitable.  If we tell them we're
going to run out in 2010 and we don't run out until 2019, it looks like
the boy who cried wolf, and then we'll have panic in 2019 because no one
believes the forecasts.

It seems to me that a historical look at the data from all of the RIR's
(although we're most concerned with ARIN at this point), presented by
the RIR's as a whole and in some official capacity, would go a long way
in clarifying the historical assignment of addresses and the likely
projections of a timeline for deployment and depletion of what's left.
I would think we would need to look at the trends down to the minimum
allocation level for each of the RIR's as a level of granularity for the
data.

Regards,

Mike