[ppml] Proposed Policy: IPv4 Countdown

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> If for example IANA announced that on January 1st 2012 that there
> would be no more IPv4 traffic allowed on the global BGP network, and
> that every ISP and network would have to renumber at that time,

In order to participate effectively in ARIN policymaking it is helpful
to understand the political milieu in which ARIN sits and also to
understand some technical basics of Internet functioning.

For instance, IANA is a function of ICANN in which various lists of
numbers are maintained. This includes SNMP MIBs, port numbers, IP
addresses etc. All of these numbers are defined by various IETF RFCs.
IANA doesn't have much authority to do anything other than manage
numbers. It certainly cannot mandate any aspect of ISP network
operations.

There is no such thing as the global BGP network. Instead, there are
many regional, national and international IP networks which use BGP to
manage routing traffic between the networks, as opposed to within the
networks. A basic assumption of BGP is that each network is autonomously
managed and has its own distinct policies. In other words each
individual network owner makes their own decisions about protocols and
traffic on their own network.

> This is the same reason that all of the television broadcasters in
> the United States told the US Congress that if they wanted to change
> to digital broadcasting and get back the large VHF allocations, that
> every last broadcaster in every city would have to switch 
> over the same
> date.

They should study the British experience. We are well into the
transition to digital even though analog transmitters have only been
shut off in a few remote areas. Companies with only 1 or two analog
channels now have 4 to 6 digital channels. People switch because there
is more free content on digital.

Is there a lesson here for IPv6?

--Michael Dillon