[ppml] Revising Centrally Assigned ULA draft

[David Conrad]

Leo,

On Jun 18, 2007, at 11:56 AM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
> I think we have to make some educated guess at what is probable.

Indeed.

My (perhaps not so) educated guesses:

- In the face of a lack of consensus that routing technology is  
facing a scalability crisis, there will be increasing economic,  
business, religious, and political pressure to further liberalize  
IPv6 allocation policies, with the end state being "at least one PI / 
48 on request".  This pressure (political, in particular, egged on by  
the economic, business and religious) will increase exponentially as  
the IPv4 free pool depletes.

- Pointing out that router upgrades cost money and take time will be  
taken as merely being co-opted into the vast ISP conspiracy aimed at  
the continued suppression of the non-ISP masses by either Lazy or  
Evil Greedy Bastards(tm) (been there, seen that, and actually do have  
the T-shirt).

- Inertia being the second most powerful force in the universe will  
actively resist deployment of any significant shift in Internet  
technology (e.g., loc/id split) unless somehow the first most  
powerful force in the universe, profit motive, can be utilized to  
overcome inertia.

- Threats of imminent death of the Internet due to routers falling  
over or infinite bgp convergence times are insufficient to trigger  
the first most powerful force in the universe because ISPs can, have,  
and will apply filters to protect their own infrastructure and  
customers.

- The first most powerful force in the universe will be against you  
when people who have obtained /48s via liberalized PI allocation  
policies (either being discussed or implemented in all RIRs as I  
understand it) come to their ISPs and offer cold hard cash to have  
those /48s routed.  As network engineers, you will lose the battle  
against the sales and marketing folks.

- There are 5 geographical monopolies, each with their own agenda.   
That the ARIN community makes a decision regarding the  
appropriateness of PI-for-everybody has little affect on the  
communities in the other geographic monopolies.  In fact, it is easy  
to imagine the first most powerful force in the universe acting to  
encourage an RIR to meet its community's demands in a way that  
ensures financial sustainability in the face of the post-IPv4-free- 
pool apocalypse.

Of course, these are just guesses.

> We need a method of deciding "worth" that can be implemented
> independently by each ISP and does not require them to trust their
> neighbor.

I don't disagree.  Are RIR policies the best place to establish worth?

Rgds,
-drc