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

[James Jun]

> When ARIN runs out of allocations then you will have a situation where
> some carriers in the US will run out before others, and the problem will
> propagate downwards to their ISP customers.  And eventually you will in
> fact have situations were multiple ISP's in the same city, some will be
> able to delay IPv6 switchover.  Very likely it will be the deep pocket
> ISPs.  So a day will come when the poorer ISPs start telling their
> customers they must switch to IPv6, and their customers, not wanting to
> spend money, will simply drop service and go to the deep pocket ISPs
> who have been able to delay IPv6 switchover, and get a few more years of
> IPv4 service before they will finally be backed into a corner and will
> have to spend money to switch over.


I am puzzled by the notion that somehow end-users have to spend notable
amount of money to get IPv6, when end-users often times spend money anyway
to replace their computer and associated hardware, including home/SOHO
routers as often as once every year if not even more often -- all as part of
their routine home-entertainment/office-use technology upgrades.  IPv6 does
not have to be a costly dedicated upgrade in everyone's annual household
budget, or even for many small business budgets.  It can be gradually
migrated into their existing annual spending budgets or next year budgets as
part of everyone's routine technology upgrades.  Unless of course you are
dealing with certain router vendors that charge extra $$ just for enabling
IPv6 in your firmware/OS code :)  But the 'certain router vendors' problem
hasn't occurred to end-user market yet to my knowledge, just within
service-provider area (apparently it is already the carriers who are
suffering the most with IPv6 mess, not the end-users and 'poor' ISPs who
have not even enabled IPv6 yet).

It is the *vendors*, the home CPE vendors, the software developers (major
props to Microsoft for making Vista a lot more IPv6-friendly), the access
ISPs/MSOs and content providers (youtube/Google, etc) that need to look into
IPv6 to create a so-called "killer app" for the switch.  End-user's regular
cycle of upgrading their computers and software will then automatically pick
up IPv6 on their next upgrade.  All that is needed is a transition strategy
at ISP level that would inter-operate the two protocols while the upgrades
are taking place.

Let me reiterate and say again:  To think that end-users have to upgrade
their computers and associated hardware just because of and *just for* IPv6,
with enough price tag to the point of justifying changing their ISP, is an
assessment that I disagree with.  When vendors and developers include IPv6
support in their next product line or product update, end-users upgrading
their hardware and software for purposes that have nothing to do with IPv6
(see: gaming, entertainment, faster speed, etc) will automatically pick up
IPv6 technology.  Energy is better spent on IPv4<->IPv6 transition
technologies and migration strategies as Antonio Querubin pointed out in his
inputs.

> 
> If you want all Interent service concentrated in the
> AOL/Comcast/RoadRunners
> of the world, then I guess you might be in favor of this happening.
> 
> A published and advertised T-date can help to equalize things because
> those who run short of IPv4 first, can use the published T-date to
> help educate their customers that IPv6 is inevitable, and moving to
> their competitor down the street that will not require them to switchover
> to IPv6 yet, will not in the long run save them any money.



The idea of equalizing things with a T-date unfortunately again further
exacerbates the IPv4 problem.  Because with all due respect, in your
perspective, it simply buys you more time and a shelter to keep reclaiming
IPv4 again and again, just so your marketing department doesn't have to work
to keep your products competitive.  You said it right there when replying to
my suggestion to enable IPv6 in your network: you prefer to keep reclaiming
IPv4 space.  The Internet is driven by a fluid and fast paced marketplace,
and energy is best spent by getting on with the program.  Small ISPs often
bash the telcos/carriers for sitting in the "profit-forever guaranteed,
lazy, hell-with-customer, monopoly zone" (which by the way is true).  But
often times, the said small ISPs are also hypocritical and lazy when they
don't want to maintain competitiveness of their own products over new
technologies like IPv6, while bashing the carriers for anti-competitive
behaviors.

IPv6 transition should be more or less be transparent and evolutionary for
*end-users*, similar to automated Windows software update, and this believe
it or not, is currently quite the case, although has been going extremely
slower than expected.  It is the developers, vendors and ISPs who should be
coordinating efforts to move IPv6 forward, majority of end-users have little
or nothing to do with it.  Remember that end-users are customers of
Internet; they are the ones who should be getting the least inconvenience.


> 
> Then the RIRs can simply set a T-date that is nothing more than a T-date
> without any cooresponding policy to do anything about it.  What is your
> objection to this?

I would support publishing a date, in fact I don't have problem with the
"A-Date" as specified.  But in any regards, definitely not T-date in context
of 2007-12 which again, oversteps the boundary of what constitutes "simple
announcement of expected IPv4 capacity exhaustion."

Letting people know that IPv4 won't be around for long is a great idea
(which is what I had been saying for half of whole email you replied to by
the way, which was construed as catch-22, then ongoing discussion being
reconfigured to questioning what my objections to 'publishing a T-date but
without any corresponding policy to it' are).  But let the people make their
own informed decisions; we do not have to make decisions on their behalf, by
arbitrary setting a policy such as 2007-12, which insists on no more ipv4
allocation thereafter-- and that is one of the main reasons why many people
are not in favor of it, and why my vote is again: No.  

Termination of IPv4 allocation should occur when the last available block
has been allocated for, not by politics of IPv6.  The RIRs and the community
should certainly use whatever means necessary to continuously inform and
update everyone that we are out of IPv4 numbering resources as the terminal
allocation reaches near.  And boy, the media will be all over it with the
new Y2K-like Internet doomsday scenario well before the last single IPv4
address left standing.

james