[ppml] [arin-announce] Legacy RSA

[Stephen Sprunk]

Thus spake "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at ipinc.net>
>>They will have value as long as ISPs are willing to take money to
>>route their traffic.  There is no reason to think ISPs will turn down
>>their money in the forseeable future.
>
> Of course - but what about their upstreams, and their other
> upstreams, and so on?

Capitalism means that as long as you're willing to pay the price, someone 
will sell you what you want.

If some networks stop routing v4, BGP will route around the "failure" and 
life will go on.  Perhaps at some point, that will involve tunnels over v6 
to a handful of v4 exchange points, i.e. a 4Bone, but not any time soon.

Of course, over time, the cost of providing v4 services may rise to the 
point where legacy holders are no longer willing to pay, but that's (a) 
their decision, and (b) far enough away that none of us can predict when or 
how it'll happen.  My crystal ball gets real fuzzy about five years from 
now, and I'm quite sure we'll still have a native v4 DFZ then.

> My traceroute to this very mailing list server passes through a
> couple of networks that I don't pay money to directly.

Not directly, no.  However, all of the networks you see in that path are 
getting money directly or indirectly from you and/or ARIN.  That's how the 
money flows in the modern Internet.

> I'm sure as long as I'm paying my feeds I'll be able to route
> whatever I want through them.  But, I doubt it is going to go more
> and a hop or so and I won't be able to compel those other
> neworks to carry my obsolete traffic if they don't want to.

Obsolete or not, if you're willing to pay the cost of moving your v4 bits 
plus a fair profit, someone will be happy to take your money.  You may find 
at some point, though, that you can get your bits moved for less if they're 
v6.

S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking