[ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Soft Landing

[David Williamson]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 04:14:31AM -0400, Member Services wrote:
> Policy Proposal Name: IPv4 Soft Landing

This is, by far, the best idea I've seen along these lines.  The
staging would enforce a gradual buildup in requirements for further
IPv4 allocations, and provides a nice 'carrot and stick' approach to
forcing migration to IPv6.

Still, as much as I'd like to say I'm in favor of this proposal, I'm
hesitant to do so.  On philophical grounds, I'm not sure that a soft
landing is strictly necessary.  When we run out of IPv4 space, we run
out of space.  Once we're out, does it matter if the landing was hard
or soft?  As long as we can walk away, it's a good landing, and IPv6
provides an alternative network protocol.  If your organization gets
screwed by the lack of IPv4 space, perhaps you should have been looking
at IPv6 earlier.

The other reason I don't think I can quite endorse this proposal is
that it is entirely focused on ISPs and PA space.  There's no mention
of how PI assignments might be handled, and I think that's a fatal
flaw.  Perhaps a revision to account for that is in order.  I'm told
that very few PI applicants come back for more space, so we'd have to
have a phased policy change that forces initial assignments to be much
more difficult to get.  (And additional space, too, of course.)

I'm not sure that some of the requirements here are useful in PI
space.  Does it make sense for an initial allocation to be documentably
96% full for a direct assignment?  That seems like a difficult barrier,
and one that will lead to frustration and operational expense for such
organizations.  Multi-homed small enterprises will particularly feel
that heat.

David - if you can fix the PI flaw, I think you have my support on this
one.

-David