[arin-ppml] IPv4 is depleted today

Fri Aug 29 15:13:33 EDT 2008

There are a couple of phrases in this post I found most
humorous:

"...return our current IPv4 address space it is to valuable
internally...."

"...will be necessary to extend the life of 
 IPv4 long enough for us to get IPv6 ramped up..."

What our esteemed colleague David is saying is in essence
he wants a transfer policy because he has a lot of IPv4
and he (understandably) wants to continue to use it.
He labels IPv6 not ready, why not?  He already has
plenty of IPv4, he doesn't need IPv6.  He has no incentive
to deploy IPv6, really.

He also won't give his network's IPv4 up to "sell" through a
transfer policy, or course not.  He is just expecting every
other legacy holder out there to sell off their IPv4.

The situation reminds me when my city, Portland OR, put
in Light Rail.  Everyone driving cars in the city strongly
supported light rail.  They all wanted it because the
figured that "the OTHER guy" would stop driving his
car, and take light rail, and get the heck off the freeway
so that THEY could drive an uncongested freeway.

Needless to say, the freeway congestion did NOT go away.

I would ask our colleague that if he feels that it would
be too much trouble for him to split his legacy block
to be able to sell off part of it under a liberalized
transfer policy, doesn't he think that everyone else with
a legacy block is going to feel the same way?  Why is
he special?  And if every other legacy holder feels this
way, then where exactly are these IPv4 blocks going to
come from that will be sold through a liberalized transfer
policy, that will "extend the life of IPv4" as he puts it.

In short, he meticulously explains why a liberalized transfer
policy would do absolutely nothing to help him return his
unused IPv4 space to the free pool, then proceeds to
claim that we need a liberalized transfer policy to enable
more IPv4 to be returned to the free pool!!!

I can't think of a more damming example of why a liberalized
transfer policy would be about as useful as teats on a boar.

Ted

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net 
> [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of David Farmer
> Sent: Friday, August 29, 2008 9:34 AM
> To: arin-ppml at arin.net
> Subject: [arin-ppml] IPv4 is depleted today
> 
> 
> When will IPv4 be depleted?  Well I realized yesterday that 
> for me and many 
> other Legacy holders it already is.
> 
> Let's step back a minute, from discussion on the list its 
> become obvious to 
> me that IPv4 depletion isn't a singe event like when the IANA 
> or ARIN Free 
> Pools are depleted, it is not a magic date.  It is a series 
> of events or dates 
> that occurs when each organization can't easily get any more 
> addresses.  
> For some networks, that date will come before others, and for 
> some that 
> date could be a long ways away.  Then, I realized for some of 
> us that day 
> already came a long time ago, especially for many Legacy holders.  
> 
> Actually, for UMN that day was 8 or 10 years ago, when I 
> realized we will 
> never ever justify another IPv4 address assignment, nor 
> should we for that 
> matter.  I'm not complaining or bragging, but stating a fact. 
>  You could argue 
> that we don't deserve the resources we have and should return 
> some.  I'll 
> grant you the right to your opinion.  I have arguments why I 
> believe your 
> wrong.  However, both are irrelevant to this line of thought.  
> 
> The discussion about what IP addresses cost got me thinking 
> about this.  
> Because, IP address have been quite expensive for us for 
> sometime, not in 
> hard currency, but in remembering and reorganizing within the 
> IPv4 address 
> space we have.  This is no where as easy as some on the list 
> try to make it 
> sound, NATs don't scale for us in bandwidth, number of flows, 
> or cost.   
> 
> There are a few places we use RFC1918 addresses, mostly for 
> things that 
> don't ever need to talk to the Public Internet, but DNS 
> issues both for 
> reverse and the leaking of forward DNS out to the Internet 
> make this very 
> ugly and just as much of a Hack as NAT.  We are considering 
> very limited 
> uses of NAT, like for visitor wireless access.  
> 
> Personally, I can't compare these costs to the costs associated with 
> justifying more address space through ARIN.  Realistically we 
> can't do that, 
> at least not until very long after IANA free pool exhaustion. 
>  It is possible that 
> they are comparable, I don't know.
> 
> You might say we (UMN) really have not and probably will not 
> completely 
> exhaust our IPv4 address, that is use it to 100%, well that 
> is probably true.  
> But, this is probably going to be true for all networks.  
> There are very few if 
> any networks that use each and every address they have.  
> There will always 
> be little unused bits within subnets and small subnets 
> sitting around in all 
> networks.  The difference is only a matter of degree and the 
> rate of growth 
> for each network.  Eventually, each network will get into a 
> dead-lock state 
> where they don't have enough resources to maneuver to free up old 
> resource, or a pseudo-dead-lock where it is more costly than 
> it is worth to 
> free up old resources.
> 
> So what will we (UMN) do when the IANA and ARIN IPv4 free pools are 
> gone?  Well, much the same as we are doing now, try to make 
> use of our 
> current resources more efficiently.  We probably will never 
> sell or return our 
> current IPv4 address space it is to valuable internally.  We 
> might share it 
> with other less directly associated customers or projects, 
> but always public 
> entities.
> 
> What about IPv6 you ask, well we have been working on it for 
> sometime, the 
> GigaPOP (think of it as an Internet2 regional ISP) we operate 
> has been 
> doing IPv6 for over 5 years.  I my opinion, IPv6 transport is 
> very easy, and 
> been that way for a while.  Where things get much harder is 
> the local subnet 
> and with the host.  We have had IPv6 operating in our lab off 
> and on over 
> the last 5 years, for about the past year we have had it in 
> Beta on the 
> network engineers and security folks subnets.  I hope to 
> enable it on our 
> whole backbone and make it available anywhere anyone wants it 
> yet this 
> year or early next, then in 2010 or 2011 turn it on by 
> default everywhere on 
> campus.
> 
> Personally I think, increased use IPv4 NAT, some kind of 
> transfer policy, or 
> forced return of unused resources, will be necessary to 
> extend the life of 
> IPv4 long enough for us to get IPv6 ramped up.  I think a 
> transfer policy will 
> be cleaner than trying to force people to return resources.
> 
> But please don't take that as saying I like those options or 
> that it is an 
> alternative to deploying IPv6, it is just necessary.  We have 
> to do BOTH, we 
> have to keep the IPv4 elephants dancing until we get all the 
> IPv6 elephants 
> dancing.  I loved that pice of metaphoric imagery.:)  So, if 
> you haven't 
> started tuning up the IPv6 band for the IPv6 elephants get 
> started now, the 
> IPv4 elephants are starting to get tired. 
> 
> 
> 
> =======================================================
> David Farmer				     Email:	farmer at umn.edu
> Office of Information Technology
> Networking & Telecomunication Services
> University of Minnesota			     Phone:	
> 612-626-0815
> 2218 University Ave SE			     Cell:	
> 	612-812-9952
> Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029		     FAX:	612-626-1818
> =======================================================
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