[arin-ppml] IANA IPv4 /8 burn rate....

[Scott Leibrand]

Alain Durand wrote:
> On 8/27/08 7:02 PM, "Scott Leibrand" <sleibrand at internap.com> wrote:
> 
>> In basic microeconomics, quantity supplied equals quantity demanded at the
>> price and quantity where the supply and demand curves intersect.
>> Expecting that quantity to be the same in a market under conditions of
>> scarcity (where the price is non-zero) as in a non-market distribution
>> system based on abundance (where the price is zero) makes no sense unless
>> the demand is completely inelastic (which it's clearly not).
> 
> I disagree with your last point, the demand seems to be pretty much
> inelastic. It is fuelled by the growth of the Internet. The fact that some
> historical allocations were not as efficiently made as they are today should
> not fool you into thinking that recent allocations are not efficient either.

Ok, that's a valid assertion.  I would counter that there is not a 
one-to-one relationship between devices and IPv4 addresses, and therefore 
the current level of observed efficiency is a function of the current 
price of IP addresses.  Given the technical means to serve multiple 
devices using a single IPv4 address (such as with NAT or IPv6+NAT-PT), I 
am confident that enterprising folks will find a way to increase the 
devices-per-IPv4-address ratio as IPv4 addresses become more costly to obtain.

-Scott