[ppml] [Spam] Re: FW: No transfer policies are needed

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net] On 
> Behalf Of Nigel Cassimire
> Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 12:57 PM
> To: ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [ppml] [Spam] Re: FW: No transfer policies are needed
> 
> 
> Robert Seastrom wrote:
> 
> >	Have you an alternative scheme to put forward, or are you simply
> against the one that has been proposed?  You would not be 
> alone if you advocated doing nothing at all and simply 
> allowing the address space to run out...
> 
> I don't have a strong advocacy since I am just beginning to 
> understand arguments on both sides of this issue. However I 
> confess that my background is in the telephone business where 
> it is routine for numbers to be recycled and for digits to be 
> added to the addressing scheme when necessary. So from that 
> frame of reference, I want to understand why it might be 
> advantageous to spend money trading in v4 addresses as 
> opposed to spending for v6 transition 

The truth is that for SOME people it will be advantageous to prolong
IPv4 life as long as possible, even if that means allowing a "market"
Your always going to find people with perfectly legitimate and logical
arguments for prolonging IPv4.

However, Internet policies should be geared to what is the best for
the entire Internet, not what is best for just some of the networks
in the Internet.

The fact of the matter is that there's been plenty of notice of the
upcoming IPv4 exhaustion.  At this time ALL major desktop operating
systems (ie: Windows XP and Vista, FreeBSD, Linux, and last but not
least MacOS X) support IPv6.  ALL major router vendors support IPv6
in their corporate and enterprise product.

The time it will take to switch the Internet over to IPv6 from IPv4
increases every day that new IPv4 is handed out.  That reason alone
is good enough to stop handing IPv4 out right now.

The ONLY possible argument against switching over right now is that
the millions of DSL and Cable modems out there do not have firmware
that supports IPv6.  But, that is merely an issue for the DSL and
Cable providers that supplied those devices.  All of those devices
are firmware-upgradable and it is perfectly possible to write IPv6
compliant firmware, or reconfigure those devices into bridged mode
and put an IPv6-compliant, inexpensive ethernet-to-ethernet router
behind them.

This situation is very much like the I-5 bridge over the Columbia
River between the State of Oregon and the State of Washington in the
United States of America.  This
is the ONLY REMAINING operating DRAWBRIDGE on the ENTIRE US Interstate
highway system.  It is PARALLELED by the I-205 bridge 2 miles away
that has 3 times the number of lanes and is a concrete bridge over
the Columbia that is less than 10 years old.  It quite obviously is
rediculous to have a I-5 highway traffic running over a drawbridge
that interferes with shipping traffic, in a metropolitian area that
has heavy vehicle traffic, and there are plans to replace it.  Yet,
every time they get ready to fire up the bulldozers, there's people
who come out of the woodwork with perfectly legitimate and logical
arguments FOR THEMSELVES to prolong the life of the existing bridge.
In the meantime, industrial property alongside the interstate, and the
river, languishes, and concrete and steel prices continue to rise.  By
the time the old bridge collapses of it's own weight and age, cost to
construct a replacement will have easily quadrupled.  Basically, what
will have occurred is that the minority who found it financially
advantageous
to delay switchover to the new bridge, will have pulled down the pants
of the rest of the majority who will end up paying far more for this
than the amounts saved by the minority who delayed it.

Similarly to this, the people advocating for an "IPv4 market" or any
other of the delaying schemes that would further IPv4 beyond the natural
runout, are in essence pulling the pants down on the future users of
the Internet, who will bear far higher IPv4->IPv6 switchover costs
since there will be far more IPv4 deployed, than the money saved by
the advocates of delaying IPv4 termination.

Ted