[ppml] Policy Proposal: 2007-12 IPv4 Countdown Policy Proposal

[Stephen Sprunk]

Thus spake <michael.dillon at bt.com>
>> Also, having the RIRs jointly announce such a date gives it
>> credibility.  A few slides by Geoff or Tony, as much as we
>> respect their work, doesn't have the same impact as an
>> official announcement.
>
> But if all we have is the slides from Geoff and Tony to justify the
> joint annnouncement, then we are on very slippery ground.

Then let's figure out what would be authoritative and go develop it.  Maybe 
it's just Geoff and Tony getting together and writing a whitepaper detailing 
their findings, methodology, etc. with a solid executive summary that any 
CIO could understand.  It'll all be over the reporters' heads anyways, so it 
probably doesn't even matter; what matters is getting an official message 
out that wakes people up.

> In my opinion, these pseudo-scientific slides cannot justify a
> countdown policy.

I don't care about justifying a countdown policy because I'm opposed to one. 
What I _am_ concerned about is motivating IT managers, smaller ISPs, 
consumer CPE vendors, etc. to take IPv6 seriously.

>> I think this is handled well enough under existing policy.
>> An org with an int'l network is _supposed_ to go to the local
>> RIR for each part of that network,
>
> Where does it say that?

I checked the NRPM and was surprised to find that there don't seem to be any 
rules preventing someone from outside ARIN's region from requesting IPv4 
allocations or assignments, though 2.2 could be read that way if someone was 
completely out of line and needed to be smacked down.  IPv6 isn't much 
clearer, though 6.2.2 and 6.5.1.1 could similarly be read that way if 
desired.

Is it me, or is this a loophole?  The "supposed to" I wrote above is based 
on prior discussions where that policy was treated as common knowledge but 
doesn't actually appear to be written anywhere.  Oops.

(This is an actual problem, since ARIN is out of sync with the other RIRs on 
PIv6 policy, and their members could -- in theory -- come to ARIN for things 
they can't get from their own RIR.  That's contrary to the way RIRs were 
sold to the community.)

>> That's why I'd prefer that the IETF and/or IANA mark space (a
>> /8 or two) explicitly reserved for uses such as 4to6 gateways
>
> That is an entirely separate issue and should be part of an entirely
> separate policy discussion. To start with, what IETF documents
> describe such 4to6 gateways? This sounds rather like an IPv4/6
> equivalent of AS 23456.

That was just an example.  I don't think the RIRs actually need to do 
anything here; the IETF could publish an RFC stating that, for example, 
223/8 was reserved for future IETF work (whatever that may be) and not 
available to RIRs, and IANA would have to abide by that per RFC 3330.  I'm 
not even sure it'd be appropriate for the RIRs to tell IANA that something 
belongs to the IETF, since it's the IETF that gave it to IANA in the first 
place.

(I picked 223/8 on purpose, since IANA tried to give it to APNIC and it was 
rejected.  I'm reasonably comfortable that the IETF won't find a use for 
more than a /8 after the rest of the v4 space is consumed.)

>> This has the (unfortunate?) side effect that even if IANA
>> stops giving out /8s to RIRs on a given date, some will likely
>> run out _months_ before others.
>
> IANA doesn't have to ONLY give out /8s. Towards the end they
> could give out smaller blocks. But that is a separate policy
> discussion.

It'd be a global policy change, and if this proposal is any indicator, we're 
not going to make much progress changing anything about v4 on a global 
basis.

Besides, dropping the allocation size from IANA to, say, a /12 would buy 
ARIN, RIPE, and APNIC a few weeks at most, whereas it'd pull in LACNIC's and 
AfriNIC's exhaustion dates months or even years.  That seems a silly place 
to expend our limited energies.

S

Stephen Sprunk      "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723         are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS                                             --Isaac Asimov