[ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: MAEMURA Akinori [mailto:maem at nic.ad.jp]
>Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 12:14 AM
>To: tedm at ipinc.net; Ed.Lewis at neustar.biz
>Cc: ppml at arin.net
>Subject: Re: [ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown
>
>
>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.
>

Your welcome.  If you really want my $0.02 on this you need
to work out several "baby step" proposals.

The first would be one to define an orderly way to bring
abandoned space into the sheepfold so it could be added to the
pool of IPv4 available to be allocated.

The second would be one to define additional requirements for
justification submittal.  One of the biggest and most obvious
would be that if an IPv4 allocation holder was to be acquired
by another IPv4 allocation holder - regardless of whether both
allocation holders were in the same number registry or not -
that the acquiring party would have to submit justification
for holding the acquired block.

The third would be one to define a mechanism that IANA
could offer a "bounty" for proof of deliberate criminal
contract violations that is similar to what the SPA and
BSA offer for reporting software piracy.  In other words if
an admin at a network was ordered to "hoard" assignments
he could rat out the network and trigger an IP number audit.

Anyway, I think you see where I'm going here.

This problem won't be solved by a single proposal like
you submitted.  The only chance of solving it in an orderly
proactive manner will be by a series of
proposals that will gradually tighten down on ALL ipv4
blocks.  Each proposal can only be a tad bit more
controversial than the last.  If you try to do too much it
is going to backfire.  You just do not understand how many
people right now have a vested interest in allowing the
train wreck to happen.  Honestly, they WANT it to happen.

>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.
>

Yes, I am afraid it will.

The same situation exists for domain names.  With most people
having a vocabulary of perhaps 500 words (OK, I'm being
a smartass, but really now) you only have perhaps 2-3000
immediately desirable and recognizable .com domain names
for each language.

Thus despite the fact that there are millions of theoretical
domain names, in reality the supply of desirable domain names
is quite constricted.

Yet, these names do in fact circulate.  They do so because the
free market has taken over.  If you want a particular domain
name all you have to do is pay for it.  It might cost you quite
a lot of money - but I suspect even coca-cola.com would be for
sale - assuming you had the 900 billion dollars to purchase the
entire company in order to get it - the point here is that if
the price goes high enough, anything is for sale.

If the number registries REFRAIN from taking a strong hand in
retrieving unused IPv4 allocations then what will happen after
the end of available IPv4 allocations is that people will start
selling them.  And as the price for them goes up - they will
become available.

You will find companies like my Microsoft example suddenly
"discovering" that they have an entire /16 available - for the
right price.

And as the price goes up - the demand will go down.  Until the
market has equalized.  This is just like gasoline sales.

The new equlized market will then continue on a VERY long time
- very likely SEVERAL DECADES before the cost of IPv4 allocation
will go so rediculously high that the pressure will become
enormous to switch the Internet over the IPv6.

If you think about it you might begin to understand one of
the reasons that the large orgs are rather diffident about
IPv6 switchover, and are very lackadasical about turning in
unused allocations.  They aren't stupid, even boneheads know
that if they have something that is constrained, it is worth
money to someone.

>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 think you will find that by the last couple of years when
it becomes obvious that ARIN is going to end up like Network
Solutions (aka, 'competition' will set in) that the
activity to obtain allocations then is going to make the
activity to obtain domain names right after the new TLD's
were opened a few years back look like kids in a sandbox.

A lot of people out there are going to create entire dummy
ISPs out of thin air then request giant alloctions with the
idea of selling them a year or so after constrainment has
happened.  This is why it is important NOW to get things like
the "rat out your lying sack o network admin" proposal
implemented.

If nobody is willing to give the registries teeth then they
won't bite anyone, and IPv4 constrainment is going to happen
faster than anyone thinks.  Then a decade from now we will all
be getting our IPv4 allocations from IPv4 brokers.  And those
brokers will be getting tons of money for doing nothing, just
like the scum domain name speculators do today.

>
>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.
>

If the Internet Registries do nothing of course they will
be criticized.  But if they do anything then they are going
to also be criticized.  Thus, why bother since your going to
be screwed either way?  Better to hold on to what you have
now and hope when the storm hits that you can hang on.

Ask yourself this.  What do you think that IANA in it's
heart of hearts wants to be doing in 2012?  Do you think they
want to be fighting a hundred lawsuits by organizations that
they are telling that they are going to take away allocations
from and give to someone else?  Or do you think they would
rather be sitting back mediating between organizations that
want to make lawful monetary transactions with each other -
I have/you buy.

>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.
>

It makes perfect sense to me.  It is a textbook technical
response to a political problem.  And it will fail in a
textbook manner, as all technical responses to political
problems fail.

I don't mean to sound negative, but you need to know what
your getting into.  Like any problem this is one that is
possible to solve.  But it will be -very hard- to solve
because for a great many people, the problem isn't that
there's a lack of IPv4 numbers, the problem is that
not enough people have adopted IPv6 that they can start pushing
for the Internet to be switched over.  Those people really
and truly want an IPv4 train wreck if for no other reason
that they can point to it and say "see, I told you that you
should have switched over"

Ted

>
>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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