[ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Soft Landing

[David Conrad]

Hi,

On May 11, 2007, at 10:29 AM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> I don't see much of a carrot.

Right.  I don't see the RIRs have much in the way of carrots to  
provide.  I suppose ARIN could start paying people to deploy IPv6, by  
providing subsidies to fund purchase of IPv6 aware equipment, etc.,  
but I suspect that might run into a bit of resistance from current  
Beancounters...

> The phases are arbitrary from management's
> perspective since they depend on IANA's actions and what the  
> various RIRs
> are doing.

Yes.  The arbitrariness can't really be avoided if you're going to  
have a phased transition.

> I'd much, much prefer that specific dates are put on the phases
> (such as 1 Jan of each year starting in 2009, or something based on  
> current
> projections) because _that_ is something management can figure in when
> planning their budgets.

The difficulty here is that it depends on consumption being something  
you can reasonably project.  Geoff's graphs notwithstanding, this is  
exceptionally difficult, particularly when socio-economic (read: land  
rush) factors come into play.  There is a bit of Heisenberg here: as  
people become more aware of the limited nature of the resource,  
they're going to start hoarding which increases scarcity which causes  
more people to notice.

I suppose both could be used, the threshold and a date, with the  
first being crossed being the trigger.  Not sure if that would  
address your concern however.

> I like the idea of progressively tighter requirements as we get  
> closer to
> exhaustion, and particularly that we are going to tell people what  
> they'll
> be long in advance of them happening instead of being based on  
> policy action
> at each meeting, which can't be predicted.

Right.

> There's also no mention of whether this is intended to be  
> retroactive, i.e.
> interface with potential reclamation activities.

Not sure exactly what you mean.

If a threshold is crossed in the "other" direction, that is, say DoD  
decides they don't want IPv4 anymore and return all of their space,  
then a case can be made that the restrictions should be relaxed.   
However, my feeling is that the restrictions should NOT be relaxed,  
even if a bunch of address space is freed up since I believe we  
really don't want to have 2 Internets.

> I'm also against third-party audits;
> if we get to the point current review procedures are insufficient  
> due to
> widespread fraud, we need to debate such a controversial change  
> separately.

This was a late addition to the policy proposal at the suggestion of  
others who I ran a draft by.  The third-party audits are addressing  
the fact that it is impossible to externally and objectively verify  
certain aspects of conformance to policy.  I'd be happy to include  
some other mechanism.

> Also, as David W. mentioned, this doesn't seem to have any  
> consideration for
> direct assignments, only allocations.  If that's the intent, which  
> I'm not
> sure I agree with, that should be called out.  If not, the same  
> requirements
> don't seem to make sense.

As mentioned in my response to David W., it was intentional.  I can  
either expand on the proposal or add a second proposal.

> Last, this seems to be a global policy, and I understand it's  
> expedient to
> submit the same proposal to each RIR, but we need someone to revise  
> this to
> show how it'll fit into the NRPM.  I'm currently on the fence,  
> given my
> issues above, so I am not volunteering for that task.

If there is a consensus that this isn't a horrible idea, I was  
planning on submitting it to the other RIRs.

Rgds,
-drc