[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: Depleted IPv4 reserves

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Besides, a "plan" in this context is nothing more than a 
> promise. Is ARIN in any position to realistically assess the 
> credibility or appropriateness of an ipv6 migration plan for 
> hundreds or thousands of small organizations? Is this a good 
> use of its resources? Is it in any position to enforce such 
> promises? If not, what is the point of such a requirement? 

It's like banking. When a small business comes in and asks
the banker for a bridging loan, is the bank really in a
position to realistically assess the credibility of the plan?
Are they in any position to enforce the small business owner's
promises? No, and no. 

Bankers basically look at the small business's history of how
they use cash and previous loans. They make lots of assumptions
based on history and the current general economic conditions.
In other words, they guess. It's an educated guess, but a 
guess nevertheless. As far as enforcement, if the business
spends the money in a way different from the plan, banks really
can't do much as long as the business meets its repayment
schedule. In other words, as long as the business overall is
generating cashflow, the specifics of how the bridge loan
was used is irrelevant. For instance, the situation to be
bridged may have changed, but the owner kept the loan anyway
to invest in new equipment or an advertising program which
was successful.

The fact is that specific instances of a bridge loan don't work
out according to plan. But that is not a good reason to do away
with ALL bridge loans.

Here in ARIN, this policy could fail in certain cases, but that
is not a good reason to reject the policy entirely.

My company is an ARIN member in the X-large class and even
though I would expect this to directly affect us in an
apparently negative way, I still don't oppose the policy.
I know that we have a lot of internal initiatives going
on to prepare for and to trial IPv6 on various of our 
IP networks including so the only real risk posed by this
policy is related to timing. Will we be ready soon enough?
Fortunatly, when there is a timing risk and you have identified
that risk a year or two in advance, you can generally mitigate
the risk by good project management so the risk isn't as big
as it might seem. I believe that most of the large ISPs are
in a similar position to us and could mitigate the risks from
this policy through a combination of good project management
and more executive support for IPv6 readiness.

However, I would like ARIN to issue a new press release, even
before we know if this policy is adopted. There is a good awareness
of the IPv4 runout date, but it is often understood as being
"the deadline". With various reserve measures in place and
proposed, the actual deadline is sooner, and ARIN should make
an effort to communicate this.

For many larger ISPs their next IPv4 address allocation
request will be the last one ever, period. 

--Michael Dillon