[ppml] Policy Proposal 2007-15: Authentication ofLegacyResources

[David Conrad]

Paul,

On Jul 30, 2007, at 5:00 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
> we're not talking about limited resources, we're talking about dead- 
> end
> resources.

A dead-end resource is just an extreme of a limited resource.   
Rationing in these cases is typically used to extend the usable  
lifetime until a replacement can be found and transitioned to or the  
demand is reduced in some other fashion.

> ipv4 has no future supply, only future zero-sum.

IPv4, like land and gold and any other indestructible resource, isn't  
magically going away on when the free pool is exhausted. All that  
will occur is the policy regime that has existed since around 1995  
will be forced to change since the underlying free pool that policy  
regime was created to manage will no longer exist.

The "future supply" of IPv4 is like the "future supply" of land and  
will likely be managed the same way (whether or not the RIRs  
acknowledge it).  MIT might discover that maybe they don't really  
need 16,777,216 addresses for their 11,000 students and faculty and  
begin to sublet portions of that space.  HP might decide they don't  
actually need the DEC /8 and start leasing it for additional  
revenues.  The individuals who thought they might have more than 256  
hosts and thus needed a class B (you know who you are :-)) might  
decide to sell (gasp!) their space to the highest bidder.  Etc.

Why do you think this won't happen?

Rgds,
-drc