[ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Transfer Policy Proposal

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of
>Kevin Kargel
>Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 6:50 AM
>To: ppml at arin.net
>Subject: Re: [ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Transfer Policy Proposal
>
>
> Scott,
>	The best plan I see now for residential ISP's is to start
>putting new customers on IPv6 for local connectivity,

Which will be very difficult.

The vast majority of residential customers these days are cable and
DSL.  The IP addresses assigned out by the ISP's they are connected to
are being assigned to the CPE devices which are plugged into the
customers PeeCees or xboxes or suchlike with ethernet, or wireless.

There is not, to my knowledge, a SINGLE CPE, ie: DSL modem, cable modem,
Linksys/Netgear/Dlink/whatever ethernet-to-ethernet router that speaks
IPv6.  Other than the test firmware that was written for a Linksys I
believe it was, and perhaps some Linux-replacement-firmware for a
handful of wireless routers (Buffalo, etc.) there are no firmware
updates for the millions of DSL and cable modems that are both DSL
and NAT devices to make them IPv6.

A very large number of residential users run multiple computers, both
laptops on wireless or small hubs.  Their ISP can, of course, easily
assign them a subnet of IPv6.  But, they will need a router at their
site to route the IPv6 subnet.

THe only way this can be done right now is for them to reconfigure
their DSL modem/NAT or cable modem/NAT devices into "bridged" mode,
then use a commercial Cisco device costing a minimum of $500.  That's
if their ISP is even handing out IPv6 subnets.  And I didn't see
that the experimental IPv6 firmware supported IPv6 PPPoE, either,
which is how most of these ISPs are delivering services.

For residential users, they are in a situation now with Windows XP
and Windows Vista and MacOS X that they have machines that can
speak IPv6 - behind routers that cannot, and will not unless the
DSL modem vendors release firmware updates.  Which will likely not
happen for any CPE model that is older than 2 years.

For ISP's that didn't get on to the DSL bandwagon, and are supplying
dialup only, the situation is even worse.  Most of those these days
have outsourced their dialup to wholesale dialup port providers who
are providing both the dialup modem port and the Internet connectivity
as well.  These ISP's don't even own their own equipment.  And the
few holdouts who still do are quite often running 15 year old Livingston
Portmasters and other such gear that isn't IPv6 compliant.

None of the wholesale national dialup providers at this time provide IPv6
connectivity for dialup ports they sell.  And they likely won't either
as they can see their market shrinking steadily every year - what this means
is the used market is flooded with perfectly good dialup modem pools,
and anyone wholesaling dialup ports today is in a contracting market, they
are essentially making a living extracting the last bits of money out of
a dying market.  They won't be buying new gear for this when there's so
much older gear that is on the secondary market.

All of this is the situation in the US today, I would be interested in
what goes on in other countries, but I would guess dialup is starting
to die off there as well.

To my view, it's pretty clear IPv6 conversion must commence from the
core and spread out.

Ted Mittelstaedt