[ppml] "Who's afraid of IPv4 address depletion? Apparently noone."

[Jon Lewis]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2008, John Curran wrote:

> At 2:11 PM -0800 2/10/08, Michael Smith wrote:
>> ...
>> So, here's the scenario I  see.
>>
>> 1) None of the big content players implement IPv6 because "there is no
>> demand."

Some of them will/already have because they have massive deployments of 
"back-end" servers and not enough IPv4 addresses to easily manage them 
all, yet they don't use IPv6 for public facing machines.

>> 3) IPv4 addresses run out
>> 5) Smaller content providers have to start putting hosts on IPv6 only
>> because they're out of addresses.

Before that happens, as mentioned, we're going to get awfully stingy and 
creative with IP assignments, and use more NAT.  But eventually, we're 
going to hit the wall and unless there are significant changes to the way 
IPv4 addressing/utilization is handled, we just won't be able to get more 
IPv4.

Interestingly, at an interview I had just months ago with a senior network 
engineer with a household name .com who's stock has never split, I was 
told the above scenario will never happen...that we're just not going to 
run out of IPv4 addresses and that there's never going to be a need for 
IPv6 in general on the internet.  I don't know where he thinks we're going 
to get IPv4 addresses from when ARIN and the other RIRs tell us they have 
no more to give us.  Maybe he thinks that'll never happen either.

> So, (obligatory question), is there a change to allocation
> policy which would address your concern?

I don't see how that's going to affect the top content providers as long 
as they have enough public IPv4 to keep their public facing systems 
online.  I don't know how you get their heads out of the sand.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis                   |  I route
  Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
  Atlantic Net                |
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