[ppml] Arguments against Policy Proposal: IPv4 Soft Landing

[Iljitsch van Beijnum]

On 23-mei-2007, at 9:10, David Conrad 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...?

Because someone requesting 4 million addresses or something like that  
out of the blue would seem way too fishy. You need a lot of  
infrastructure to be able to deploy those addresses, and by now,  
everyone with a lot of infrastructe is already doing IP so they'll  
already have significant amounts of address space. If it's a new  
business, presumably, they'd need some time to be in the position to  
deploy all those addresses so they wouldn't need the really large  
block immediately, but they could start with a much smaller block.

>>> 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.

We've been "nearing exhaustion" for a decade now. I don't think we  
can do much better than what we have now before we start throwing  
away babies in the bath water.

> 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.

This is the cental issue. Since we can't avoid the eventual pain when  
the point comes that the RIRs have to say "sorry, we don't have  
enough free addresses to honor your request", the question is: how do  
we minimize the pain BEFORE that happens? My answer: by keeping the  
IPv4 policies the way they are now. The policies aren't always  
entirely pain-free, but the industry as a whole can deal with them  
without too much trouble.

>> 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?

A better analogy would be that you're almost out of gas. My position  
is that you should keep driving until you're flat out. Your position  
is that you should reduce speed so that people will see there is a  
problem and take the bus instead.