[ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown

Wed Mar 14 03:14:08 EDT 2007

Hi Ed, Ted and all,

Thank you Ed for your support on this proposal.  The proposor
team will make the petition later according to the process 
which Ted kindly spelled out.

Ted's observation and analysis was wise and cool.  I am happy 
to have that.

The Proposers' point of view is to anticipate the run-out 
period to avoid a mix-up situation as far as we can.

According to www.potaroo.net for example, IANA's stock of
IPv4 /8 block will run out in July 2011 which is four years
and four months later from now.  

We don't have much time until the exhaustion.  Four years 
is less than a conventional depreciation period and Gantt
Chart of a big carrier's mid-term deployment plan might 
already include this point of time.

People might say IPv4 address space would be never "exhausted"
because assigned-but-unused spaces will circulate.  However, 
it will need an orderly reclamation process which will need 
an additional address policy.  Even if they will circulate,
I am not at all sure the sufficient amount of circulated/
re-used space will be supplied to meet the pace of recent 
IPv4 address consumption - 10 * /8s per one year.

We don't intend an artificially earlier termination of IPv4
address space by that particular policy proposal while it
might have been regarded so by many people, but want to 
ensure all requests by the termination date is are be 
received, evaluated and then allocated if no problem.  Our 
problem is we don't have a very clear idea how much space 
will be rushing in in the last minutes additionally to 
expected rate.

I don't want to be either in the middle of a crossfire nor 
just looking at a train wreck.  Why we are doing something
like going into a crossfire is because an Internet Registry
might be accused of wrong handling of the exhaustion.

And we are proposing this to a member meeting because that
the poilcy of a membership organization will be discussed 
there and determined according to the consensus of 
membership and community.

Hope it makes sense to you.  We are happy to answer to your 
questions if you have any unclear points.

Regards,
-----
MAEMURA Akinori                General Manager IP Department
maem at nic.ad.jp      JPNIC - Japan Network Information Center

In message <NABBJOELMNGNJNGPKDDOIELPHAAA.tedm at ipinc.net>
   "Re: [ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown"
   ""Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at ipinc.net>" wrote:

| 
| >-----Original Message-----
| >From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of
| >Edward Lewis
| >Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 1:08 PM
| >To: petition at arin.net
| >Cc: ppml at arin.net
| >Subject: Re: [ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown
| >
| >
| >I would like to voice a qualified "I object" to this rejection.
| >
| >I would like to see some discussion on this, even though I comprehend
| >the reasons given below for the rejection and acknowledge that they
| >are valid.  My motivation for speaking up is to see if there might be
| >a way that the spirit of the proposal can be pushed forward in ARIN
| >even if the particular proposal has mechanics that are problematic.
| >
| >At this point, I don't have a specific recommendation, just wanted to
| >say that there might be a reason to reconsider this, perhaps in
| >another form.
| >
| >At 12:47 -0500 3/2/07, Member Services wrote:
| >>On 1 March 2007 the ARIN Advisory Council (AC) concluded its review of
| >>the proposed policy 'IPv4 Countdown' and did not accept it as a formal
| >>policy proposal.
| >>
| >
| >
| 
| Objection methods are spelled out here:
| 
| "...In the event that the AC decides not to accept the proposed policy, then
| the author may elect to use the petition process to advance the
| proposal. For petition details see the section called "Petition
| Process" in the ARIN Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process which
| can be found at:
| http://www.arin.net/policy/irpep.html
| 
| The deadline for the author to initiate a petition per the ARIN Internet
| Resource Policy Evaluation Process is 40 days prior to the meeting; the
| petition deadline for the ARIN XIX Public Policy Meeting
| is 14 March 2007. If the author chooses not to petition or the petition
| is unsuccessful, then the proposed policy is closed. If a petition is
| successful, then the proposal will be numbered and posted for discussion
| and presented at ARIN's Public Policy Meeting...."
| 
| 
| Frankly, it was a politically naieve proposal and it is unsurprising
| that they killed it.  (the anti-trust excuse given is just hogwash,
| of course)
| 
| The IP numbering registries are all political bodies, and the process
| for IP address assignment is also political.  As everyone who knows
| anything about politics knows, problems only get attention that are
| about ready to burn down the house.
| 
| When all numbering registries have exhausted the pool of IPv4 assignments,
| only at that time will there be the political will to start the garbage
| collection process of reclaiming abandonded IP number blocks.  Look on
| the Bogon list for a good place to start.  But more than that, of all the
| number blocks assigned, it is clearly obvious that the vast majority of ones
| assigned to corporations are NOT being used externally.
| 
| It is quite obvious, for example, that having something like 131.107.0.0/16
| assigned to Microsoft makes it quite easy for Microsoft's administrators to
| have this giant worlwide WAN that runs BGP internally and has many
| interconnection
| points to the world.  Very good.  Then how come Looking Glass only shows
| MS's AS's  (3598, and 8068-8075) interconnected to the rest of us
| via Level 3?
| 
| And more importantly, is it reasonable to assume that Microsoft has anywhere
| near sixty five thousand hosts directly accessible from the global Internet?
| 
| If they do not have sixty five thousand separate hosts then why do they
| need 65536 routable IPv4 addresses?  Espically since they themselves sell
| Small Business Server and they also sell MS IDS, both of which are firewalls
| that force you to number your internal network privately.  Obviously what is
| sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, here.
| 
| I also might point out that with a little effort you could find LOTS of IPv4
| addresses.
| 
| For the above example, for instance, Microsoft's administrators might argue
| that they need dozens of /24's to be able to advertise at many different
| Level 3
| interconnection points because everyone filters anything below /24
| 
| And why is this?  It is because in the past, router technology has not
| been able to deal with more than a few hundred thousand route entries.
| 
| Fine then.  ARIN can write an RFC introducing /29 global BGP routing.
| Everyone on the Internet running core routers can replace their old crap and
| buy new routers that can easily manage 20-30 million BGP route entries.
| VISA can manage ten times that number of credit card numbers globally so
| you know that companies could make that kind of router hardware if there
| was demand for it.
| 
| Then Microsoft can replace all their /24 advertisements with /29
| advertisements
| at their Level 3 interconnects.
| 
| Needless to say there will be more screaming than you can imagine by the
| core that doesen't want to drop the cash into upgrading.  Thus it won't
| happen until the alternative becomes more expensive (ie: shift the Internet
| to IPv6
| and renumber)
| 
| Clearly what is going to need to happen is for people like MS - who has no
| real justification for that large an IPv4 assignment - to renumber and give
| up most of their existing allocations.
| 
| But until the Internet is COMPLETELY OUT of IPv4 addresses, there will NOT
| be the political will for ARIN to go to MS and force them to spend the money
| to renumber.
| 
| The situation is the same and the US and soon China's dependence on oil
| imported
| from the Mid East.
| 
| China and the US will never switch to alternative fuels until all of the oil
| is
| drained out of the Mid East oil reserves, and it is naieve to think
| otherwise.
| 
| Thus, we will have to continue to pay attention to the idiots in Israel and
| Palestine killing each other until this happens, and those people will have
| no
| incentive to change their ways.
| 
| Once the mid east oil runs out the world will ignore the mid east, and
| within
| 5 years they will have run out of weapons and there will be no more war
| there.
| 
| Once the Internet "runs out" of IPv4 addresses, then these large
| organizations
| like Microsoft will have no choice but to give up their allocations and
| renumber into something that is inline with the hosts they have on the
| Internet
| and suddenly there will be an oversupply of IPv4 numbers.
| 
| You need to understand the politics behind the IPv4-on-the-Internet-backbone
| debate.
| 
| All the hardware and router vendors (ie Cisco) are solidly for going to IPv6
| because they want to make $$$ selling hardware upgrades.
| 
| The telcos and ISP's are all solidly against going to IPv6 and are for
| address
| reclamation, because they have gear that is working perfectly well and they
| don't want to scrap it.
| 
| >From the hardware people's POV they have won this war already.  But, they
| have time on
| their side.  They know that eventually IPv4 allocations will run out and
| they
| think at that time that they will be able to sell gear.  They do not want to
| look
| like greedy bastards so they will not publically support anything that will
| hasten the day that IPv4 allocations run out.
| 
| >From the Telco's POV they know that there's lots of IPv4 hoarded out there
| by
| deep pocket companies like MS, and DoD and so on that got it ages ago when
| it was plentiful.  They know that the more of this they can push the
| registries to
| cough up the more time they have to push off the day they have to spend the
| $$$
| for new hardware.  So they won't publically support anything either that
| hastens the day IPv4 allocations run out.
| 
| And the standards bodies like ARIN don't want to get caught in the
| crossfire.
| They are going to pretend the problem is out of their control and there is
| nothing that they can do.  Thus, they will be blameless when the day comes
| that
| the last IPv4 allocation is given out.
| 
| To politically naieve people like you I am sure all this sounds like a bunch
| of
| idiots that are just heading straight for a train wreck and you cannot
| understand
| why nobody is jumping up and down and trying to slow the train down.  What
| you
| don't understand is that the cooler heads know all about this, but they also
| know that if they jump up and down, that nobody is going to pay attention to
| them.
| It is better to remain aloof, then when the train wreck does happen and you
| got
| a lot of stunned people running around panicing, then you can come sailing
| out
| on your white horse with your new IPv6 plan and "rescue" everyone. They will
| be
| so happy your picking up the wreck that they won't care your screwing them
| up the ass doing it.
| 
| This is just how life and politics works.
| 
| Ted
| 
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