[ppml] Arguments against Policy Proposal: IPv4 Soft Landing

[David Conrad]

Iljitsch,

On May 22, 2007, at 4:30 PM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> The way I see it, the only people who can successfully request  
> really big blocks of address space, are people who already hold  
> really big blocks of address space,

You believe this because...?

>> The point of increased requirements such as the 3rd party audit is to
>> reduce the likelihood of people simply making up numbers to get
>> allocations.
> Did you have any request size in mind for this? An audit for a /9  
> request makes some sense. For a /24 request it's complete overkill.

I would assume 3rd party audits would be applied fairly to all  
requesters, but I would also assume this would be at the discretion  
of ARIN staff.

>> However, folks at router vendors who can reasonably be assumed to
>> know what they are talking about have indicated that router
>> scalability isn't a concern for 5 to 10 years.
>
> Not exactly
> ...
> See the results from the IAB routing and addressing workshop last  
> year.

Yes, if you remember, I was there.  However, I have also been  
following subsequent discussions in various places and discussing the  
situation with folks at router vendors.  My statement stands (even  
though I do not necessarily believe it).

>>> 4) Efficiency above 80%.
> ...
> If you have 50 hosts in one subnet you can have a /26 (64  
> addresses) and have about 80% efficiency. But if you have 500 hosts  
> in 10 subnets, you'll need a /22 (1024 addresses), which allows for  
> 16 /26 subnets even though you only need 10. So at the organization- 
> >subnet level you are 10/16 = 62.5% efficient and then 50/64 =  
> 78.125% at the subnet level but your total efficiency is only  
> 500/1024 = 48.8%.

I'm aware of how traditional addressing works.  I'll reiterate a  
previous comment I made:

>> However, the IPv4 free pool is nearing exhaustion so
>> it is unlikely that the processes and procedures used when IPv4 was
>> plentiful will continue to be appropriate.

The transition from being able to obtain IPv4 from the free pool to  
being unable to obtain IPv4 from the free pool WILL be painful.   
There is no way around this.  Really.  The point of the "Soft  
Landing" policy is to encourage folks to deal with the situation  
sooner rather than waiting until they hit a wall.  Alain appears to  
be distressed that the "Soft Landing" policy will require increased  
efficiency in order to obtain additional IPv4 address space from the  
RIRs.  The alternative to "Soft Landing" is one day in the relatively  
near future, Alain will _NOT_ be able to obtain additional IPv4  
addresses from the RIRs.  Period.

> My ideal scenario is one where nothing changes, except for a  
> possible gradual increase in the yearly number of address use, so  
> we don't have to keep coming up with new predictions that people  
> are going to ignore if they don't like them. Predictability is key.

And how would you propose to enforce predictability in address space  
consumption?  How does putting the car on cruise control and closing  
your eyes remove the wall that is in front of your car?

Rgds,
-drc