[ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Soft Landing

[Kevin Kargel]

I still think that all we have to do is do nothing with IPv4, stop
improving and adding management, let it die a slow death by attrition,
while at the same time making IPv6 easier to use and educating people on
the network enhancements that IPv6 provides.

What we will see is that the big money boys with R&D teams and budgets
will migrate to IPv6, their indispensable services will begin to be more
easily available on IPv6 than they are via IPv4, and the small networks
will have to either migrate to keep up or suffer a life of segregation
(or pay big fees to gateway services).  

Just as consumers naturally migrated from Beta to VHS because of
content, from LP's to tape to CD because of content, and from Win98 to
WinXP because of content and services and support, so will consumers
migrate to IPv6 when it is easier and offers advantages.  

It would be much better for the internet community if we avoided the
temptations of ego and control, and concentrated on architecture more
than management.  Build the product before we try to force the market.

Kevin

$s/worry/happy,g 




> -----Original Message-----
> From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net] On 
> Behalf Of David Conrad
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 3:03 PM
> To: Stephen Sprunk
> Cc: ARIN PPML
> Subject: Re: [ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Soft Landing
> 
> 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
> 
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