[ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Transfer Policy Proposal

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Scott Leibrand [mailto:sleibrand at internap.com]
>Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 8:54 PM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Cc: ppml at arin.net
>Subject: Re: [ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Transfer Policy Proposal
>
>
>> Is there any reason that extending the lifetime of IPv4 will be of any
>> benefit to the Internet community?
>
>Yes.  There is a large installed base for whom migrating to IPv6 may be 
>painful (expensive).  Reducing the community's total expense for 
>operating their IP networks is a benefit to the Internet community.
>

The longer you put off migration to IPv6 the more IPv4 hosts you will
have, and the more work you will have to do to migrate all of them.
Now that all modern OS's and router OS's are IPv6 compliant, there
is less and less reason every day to delay it.

The best thing for the entire Internet is for all hosts to migrate to
IPv6 at the same time.  This will have the least amount of stress on
the routers, (smallest route table) and it will not give any one org
a competitive advantage over another, that is based soley on what IP
addressing they happen to have in inventory.  It will also allow the
networks to offload the largest amount of the cost of transition on
to the end-users, who after all are the main beneficiaries of the
Internet's existence.

Phasing in IPv6 as so many people seem to think is a good idea is
by contrast a horrible idea, as what will happen is the end users
will simply have no incentive to upgrade their stuff to be IPv6
compliant - if their ISP asks them to do it, they will move to a
competitor - thus the early IPv6 adopters will get penalized,
they will end up spending the money to upgrade, and losing customers.

The very best thing is for all end users to be given a consistent
message by ALL ISP's that they must update.

Consider for a second the "phase in" process for HD-TV broadcasts
in North America.  The number of end user consumers who have adopted
HD-TV during the "phase in" period prior to Feb 2009 is a drop in
the bucket.  If the drop-dead deadline for broadcasting had never been
set to Feb 2009, but instead set to "when the last guy turns off his
NTSC TV set" then HD-TV would be stillborn.

Telephone systems also do not "phase in" dialing plan changes.  When
they go to 10-digit dialing for an exchange, it affects EVERYONE.  They
do not tell people "oh, you have an older phone which only saves the
7 digits from it's caller ID into your redial button, we will wait
until your phone dies before making you start dialing 10 digits"

>That is exactly what this policy proposal attempts to accomplish: it 
>requires that any potential transferee justify their need for IP space, 
>exactly as they have to do today.  They can then get IPv4 space from 
>ARIN, if ARIN has any to give, or they can go out and find a transferor 
>willing to part with some space.
>

Alowing them to go directly to a transferor is the fundamental problem.
Sure, it may allow an org to get some IPv4 when ARIN has none.  But the
side effects are to introduce the idea of IP ownership.  If the transferor
has IPv4 to give they likely are already in violation of their RSA, in
any case.  It's far better to hold orgs to the RSA contracts and promises
they made, and if they have extra IPv4, they should return it to ARIN for
reallocation.

We will have to deal with the case law and precident that allowing this
creates, long after the last Ipv4 address is decomissioned.  For that
reason alone it is foolish to hamstring ARIN's future IP addressing
authority for the sake of a short-term fix now.  This is the legacy IPv4
assignment fiasco all over again.
  
>
>One important point I'll reiterate: we're not talking about just 
>"abandoned" or "unused" IP space here.  We're talking about providing 
>organizations a financial incentive to reduce their usage of IPv4 space 
>(such as by adopting IPv6), thereby freeing up space for other 
>organizations who still need it.  To enable that, we need a new policy, 
>such as the one we've proposed.
>

Paying less money for IP addressing, by paying the lower fees for IPv6,
is plenty of incentive for organizations to reduce their usage of IPv4.
We don't need to give them further money by letting them sell off
their IPv4 to the highest bidder.

Ted